Happy Friday everyone. It was great to see those of you who were able to join us for our monthly luncheon yesterday, have a great weekend all.
Friday, May 3, 2013
JSC TODAY HEADLINES
1. Notification Regarding the IRD Storage System Maintenance Today - 8 a.m. to 2 p.m.
2. Starport Presents: Father-Daughter Dance 2013
3. Technology and Partnerships Abound in New Articles Online
4. SPACE 'Live Labs' for Civil Servant Managers/Admin Officers
5. Escape Your Silo: Cardiovascular Lab Tour
6. OSHA 30-Hour Construction Safety and Health: May 20 to 24 -- Building 20, Room 304
7. Payload Safety Review and Analysis: July 9 to 12 -- Building 20, Room 205/206
8. Space Available - APPEL - Introduction to Green Engineering
9. Space Available - APPEL - Lifecycle, Processes and Systems Engineering
________________________________________ NASA FACT
" NASA's Space Communications and Navigation (SCaN) test bed has begun experiments after completing its checkout on the International Space Station. The SCaN test bed is an advanced, integrated communications laboratory facility that uses a new generation of software-defined radio technology to allow researchers to develop, test and demonstrate advanced communications, networking and navigation technologies in space."
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1. Notification Regarding the IRD Storage System Maintenance Today - 8 a.m. to 2 p.m.
The Information Resources Directorate (IRD) will be running a performance test on all IRD-managed storage today from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. During this time, there could be a performance impact on systems, both physical and virtual, that are connected to the IRD storage. This test is necessary to help diagnose current performance issues seen on the IRD storage system.
Please direct any questions to the Enterprise Service Desk at x34800 or the IRD Customer Service Center at x46367.
JSC IRD Outreach x41334 http://ird.jsc.nasa.gov/default.aspx
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2. Starport Presents: Father-Daughter Dance 2013
Make Father's Day weekend a date your daughter will never forget! Enjoy a night of music, dancing, refreshments, finger foods, dessert, photos and more. Plan to get all dressed up and spend a special evening with the special little lady in your life. The dance is open to girls of all ages, and attire is business casual to semi-formal. A photographer will be on hand to capture this special moment with picture packages for you to purchase. One free 5x7 will be provided.
o June 14 from 6:30 to 9 p.m. in the Gilruth Center Alamo Ballroom
o Cost is $45 per couple ($15 per additional child)
Tickets may be purchased at the Gilruth Center information desk beginning May 6. Tickets must be purchased by June 8, and there will be no tickets sold at the door.
Visit our website for more information.
Event Date: Friday, June 14, 2013 Event Start Time:6:30 PM Event End Time:9:00 PM
Event Location: Gilruth Center Alamo Ballroom
Add to Calendar
Shelly Haralson x39168 http://starport.jsc.nasa.gov/
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3. Technology and Partnerships Abound in New Articles Online
This week, new Web features on the JSC home page and JSC Features highlight not only the wonderful work we did as an integrated agency with Curiosity, but also the exciting prospects for technology on the horizon--many of which were made possible through partnerships with other outside companies. If you want to read more about Curiosity's award-winning team and Technology Transfer, get clicking!
JSC External Relations, Office of Communications and Public Affairs x33317
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4. SPACE 'Live Labs' for Civil Servant Managers/Admin Officers
NASA's Standard Performance Appraisal Communication Environment (SPACE) system goes live May 6. To help ensure a smooth transition to the SPACE system, we've scheduled several "live lab" sessions for civil servant (CS) managers/administrative officers. Attendees will be able to work on performance plans (can drop in to the "live labs" as schedules allow), and Human Resources (HR) support will be available to answer any system-related questions. Registration is not required. For additional questions, please talk with your HR representative.
Session dates/times:
Wednesday, May 8
o Intended Audience: CS admin officers
o Building 12, Room 144, from 8 a.m. to noon
Thursday, May 9
o Intended Audience: CS admin officers
o Building 12, Room 144, from 8 a.m. to noon
Tuesday, May 14
o Intended Audience: CS managers/supervisors
o Building 12, Room 144, from 8 a.m. to noon
Wednesday, May 15
o Intended Audience: CS managers/supervisors
o Building 12, Room 144, from 8 a.m. to noon
Wednesday, May 22
o Intended Audience: CS managers/supervisors
o Building 12, Room 144, from 8 a.m. to noon
Thursday, May 23
o Intended Audience: CS managers/supervisors
o Building 12, Room 144, from 1 to 5 p.m.
Lisa Pesak x30476
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5. Escape Your Silo: Cardiovascular Lab Tour
Please join the Human Systems Academy for a tour of the Cardiovascular Laboratory on May 14 in Building 261, Room 120, from either 2 to 2:30 p.m. or 2:30 to 3 p.m.
Space is limited, so please register today in SATERN: https://satern.nasa.gov/learning/user/deeplink_redirect.jsp?linkId=SCHEDULED_... (or 68803)
Cynthia Rando 281-461-2620 http://sa.jsc.nasa.gov/
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6. OSHA 30-Hour Construction Safety and Health: May 20 to 24 -- Building 20, Room 304
This four-and-a-half day course assists the student in effectively conducting construction inspections and oversight. Participants are provided with basic information about construction standards, construction hazards, health hazards, trenching and excavation operations, cranes, electrical hazards in construction, steel erection, ladders, scaffolds, concrete and heavy construction equipment. This course is based on the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) Construction Safety course and is approved for award of the 30-hour OSHA completion card. Course may include a field exercise at a construction site, if feasible. There will be a final exam associated with this course, which must be passed with a 70 percent minimum score to receive course credit. Registration in SATERN is required. This may be the last time this course is offered. Use this direct link for registration.
https://satern.nasa.gov/learning/user/deeplink_redirect.jsp?linkId=SCHEDULED_...
Event Date: Monday, May 20, 2013 Event Start Time:8:00 AM Event End Time:4:00 PM
Event Location: Building 20 Room 304
Add to Calendar
Shirley Robinson x41284
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7. Payload Safety Review and Analysis: July 9 to 12 -- Building 20, Room 205/206
Class is 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. daily. This course is designed as a guide to payload safety review for payload program safety and management personnel. The student will gain an understanding of payload safety as it relates to the overall payload integration process, how the payload safety review process works and the roles and responsibilities of the various players in the payload safety review process. In addition, the student will be instructed in the hands-on fundamentals of payload hazard analysis, hazard documentation and presentation of analyses to the Payload Safety Review Panel. The course will include a mock presentation to the Payload Safety Review Panel. Those with only support or supervisory responsibilities in payload safety should attend course SMA-SAFE-NSTC-0016, Payload Safety Process and Requirements. SATERN registration required. Contractors, note: Please update your SATERN profile with a current email, phone, supervisor and NASA org code your contract supports prior to registering. https://satern.nasa.gov/learning/user/deeplink_redirect.jsp?linkId=SCHEDULED_...
Polly Caison x41279
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8. Space Available - APPEL - Introduction to Green Engineering
This three-day course provides an introduction to the topic of green engineering, a tool for reducing the environmental impact of products, processes and systems and making them more sustainable. From a NASA perspective, green engineering is an engineering best practice that considers environmental impacts as another design risk for mission success.
This course is designed as a graduate-level seminar for engineers, scientists, project managers and others who design products, processes or systems and want to understand, quantify and reduce the associated environmental impacts. Note: This course is not focused on green buildings and facilities, though examples from building systems will be used where relevant.
This course is available for self-registration in SATERN until Tuesday, June 4. Attendance is open to civil servants and contractors.
Dates: Tuesday to Thursday, July 16 to 18
Location: Building 12, Room 152
Zeeaa Quadri x39723 https://satern.nasa.gov/learning/user/deeplink_redirect.jsp?linkId=SCHED...
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9. Space Available - APPEL - Lifecycle, Processes and Systems Engineering
This three-day course introduces systems engineering processes, NASA lifecycle phases, key technical reviews and systems engineering management techniques. The course helps you realize the value of well-established systems engineering processes and deliverables.
This course is designed for NASA's technical workforce, including systems engineers and project personnel who seek to develop the competencies required to succeed as a leader of a project team, functional team or small project.
This course is available for self-registration in SATERN until Tuesday, May 7. Attendance is open to civil servants and contractors.
Dates: Tuesday to Wednesday, June 18 to 20
Location: Building 12, Room 152
Zeeaa Quadri x39723 https://satern.nasa.gov/learning/user/deeplink_redirect.jsp?linkId=SCHED...
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________________________________________
JSC Today is compiled periodically as a service to JSC employees on an as-submitted basis. Any JSC organization or employee may submit articles. To see an archive of previous JSC Today announcements, go to http://www6.jsc.nasa.gov/pao/news/jsctoday/archives.
Human Spaceflight News
Friday, May 3, 2013
Artist concept of NASA 905 & space shuttle mockup at Space Center Houston
HEADLINES AND LEADS
Some aren't fans of NASA's proposed budget
T.J. Aulds - Galveston County Daily News
Despite Johnson Space Center Director Ellen Ochoa's claim that the area's NASA center fared well in President Obama's 2014 fiscal year budget proposal, the space-based business community and those in Congress aren't necessarily over the moon about the request. NASA is seeking $17.7 billion, $55 million less than in the current budget. Of that, there's a request for monies so NASA can focus on a mission to capture a near-Earth asteroid and bring it into the moon's orbit for testing. Still, the concept of lassoing an asteroid, as does the budget's priorities in general, has plenty of skeptics. "This is the same budget that's been beaten down by the Senate and House for the past three years," Bob Mitchell, the president of the Bay Area Houston Economic Partnership, said. His group has a large base of space contractors as members. "The idea of roping an asteroid is purely political."
NASA Said to Face Soaring Costs Without Budget Approval
Chris Strohm - Bloomberg News
(Previews an interview with Administrator Charlie Bolden on Bloomberg Television's "Capitol Gains," show airing on May 5)
The U.S. would have to extend a contract with Russia and pay "significantly more" to send crews into space if Congress doesn't approve the National Aeronautics and Space Administration budget request for next fiscal year, agency Administrator Charles Bolden said. NASA needs full funding to develop a domestic industry to transport U.S. crews to and from the International Space Station and low-Earth orbit beginning in 2017, Bolden said in an interview on Bloomberg Television's "Capitol Gains," airing May 5.
NASA awards $1.8 million to UCF professor for study of long-range human missions
Mark Matthews - Orlando Sentinel
One of the major challenges of space travel -- especially to far-off destinations such as Mars -- is keeping human crews focused during dangerous voyages that could take months, even years. To begin working that problem, NASA recently awarded two grants, worth a combined $1.8 million, to Eduardo Salas, a professor at the University of Central Florida who has studied ways to improve human performance in high-stress situations, such as law enforcement and piloting. The goal is to find ways to better identify, and hopefully offset, mental hardships that could impact astronauts' ability to complete their mission, as well as determine the best method to split spacecraft operations between humans and computers.
Satellite Repair Demos Resume Aboard ISS
Mark Carreau - Aerospace Daily
NASA flight controllers resumed activities with the Robotic Refueling Mission outside the International Space Station on May 1, using the Canadian robot arm/Special-Purpose Dextrous Manipulator (Dextre) combination to demonstrate a series of satellite repair capabilities. The work — manipulating coaxial cable connectors, removing screws and insulation blankets that are representative of components found on spacecraft never designed for servicing in orbit — is scheduled to continue through the middle of next week, said Robert Pickle, NASA's Robotic Refueling Mission lead in Mission Control at the Johnson Space Center.
Houston Museum to Display Historic NASA Jet with Mock Space Shuttle
Robert Pearlman - collectSPAC.com
They say that everything is bigger in Texas and that certainly goes for Space Center Houston's newly-announced space shuttle exhibit. Space Center Houston, which serves as the official visitor center for NASA's Johnson Space Center, revealed plans on Thursday to display its full-size space shuttle mockup atop the historic jumbo jetliner that ferried the real orbiters after their return from space and delivered them to their museum homes. NASA transferred ownership of its original Shuttle Carrier Aircraft (SCA), a modified Boeing 747 jet, to Space Center Houston on Thursday, setting in motion the visitor center's plans to pair the replica shuttle it received last June with the airplane that landed in Houston five months later. "This is an exciting day for Texans, as we accept the SCA from NASA and assume the awesome responsibility for its modifications, showcasing its legacy and adding a one-of-a-kind experience to our complex," said Richard Allen, president and CEO of Space Center Houston.
Canadarm on display:
Space shuttle robot arm unveiled at Canadian museum
Robert Pearlman - collectSPACE.com
The original Canadarm, the Canadian-built robotic arm that for 30 years was used to reach out from NASA's space shuttles to deploy and capture satellites, support spacewalking astronauts and help assemble the International Space Station, now has a new mission in its retirement: public outreach. Canadian Space Agency officials unveiled the Canadarm's new permanent display at the Canada Aviation and Space Museum in Ottawa, Ontario on Thursday. Joining the event via a video broadcast from orbit, Chris Hadfield, the first Canadian commander of the International Space Station, participated by "sending the command" to reveal the arm's new exhibit.
Astronaut MP Garneau snubbed at museum opening of Canadarm exhibit
Canadian Press
Marc Garneau — the only MP who's ever flown in space — is insulted that he wasn't invited to Thursday's opening of a Canadarm exhibit at a national museum. Adding insult to injury, the Liberal MP says it was his idea to display the iconic robotic space arm at a public museum, rather than have it moulder in obscurity at the Canadian Space Agency's headquarters near Montreal. Garneau is Canada's first astronaut and a former head of the space agency. He operated the Canadarm on two of his three space missions. Yet that wasn't enough to earn him an invitation to Thursday's exhibit opening at the Canada Aviation and Space Museum.
Fredericksburg students quiz astronauts
Zeke MacCormack - San Antonio Express-News
In an event they called awesome and inspiring, students in an acclaimed aerospace curriculum here spoke Thursday with space travel veterans Chris Cassidy and Eileen Collins. Cassidy appeared at Fredericksburg High School on a video link from the International Space Station, at one point doing a weightless flip, as the craft orbited 260 miles overhead at a speed of 17,000 mph. He fielded questions on relations among the six astronauts there, experiments they're conducting, their diet and recreational activities. "Looking out the window, you just can't replace that," said the former Navy SEAL from Maine who became an astronaut in 2006 and is on his second trip in space. Encouraging the students to think big, Cassidy, 43, predicted that lessons learned now will allow future generations to one day live somewhere other than Earth.
Fredericksburg students chat with NASA astronaut
Eric Gonzalez - KENS TV (San Antonio)
Fredericksburg High School was command central on Thursday as students got a rare opportunity to talk to American astronaut Christopher Cassidy. His mission: Work on experiments from the International Space Station, about 260 miles above the Earth. The students' mission: Ask about life in space and other space-related topics.
SpaceX snubbed manned-cargo contract
Colby Howell - KWKT TV (Central Texas)
Since NASA shut down the space shuttle program in 2011, the agency has been relying on their Russian counterparts and private companies like SpaceX to deliver supplies to the International Space Station. The President wanted to have all missions launch off American soil by 2015, but that has now been kicked down the road by a couple of years. SpaceX has a contract to deliver supplies to the International Space Station, but not human cargo. NASA has been using the Russian space agency to do that work. In a Tuesday announcement, NASA snubbed SpaceX and decided to keep using Russian resources even though SpaceX said they could do it almost 50 million dollars cheaper per person. NASA cited Congress' lack of funding as the reason for the delay. SpaceX testing facilities are located in McGregor. (NO FURTHER TEXT)
Robert Bigelow Plans a Real Estate Empire in Space
Adam Higginbotham – Bloomberg BusinessWeek
Robert Bigelow was no more than 9 years old when he heard his first atom bomb explosion. He was upstairs in his bedroom, in a two-story brick house in Las Vegas. There was a low rumble in the early hours of the morning; a bright flash seared the horizon. "All of a sudden," Bigelow remembers, "it lights up like daytime." After that, there were dozens more explosions, out on the Nevada National Security Site just 75 miles away in the Mojave Desert. During the day, he and his classmates at Highland Elementary School were often sent out into the playground to watch as mushroom clouds roiled 40,000 feet into the sky. The atomic tests were Bigelow's first encounter with the wonders of science. As he grew up in the Las Vegas of the early '50s—then still a small town—foretastes of the Space Age transfixed him: exotic jet planes screaming overhead from Nellis Air Force Base and stories of UFO sightings recounted by friends and family. At 12, Bigelow decided that his future lay in space travel, despite his limitations. "I hated algebra," he says. "I knew I was no good at it." So he resolved to choose a career that would make him rich enough that, one day, he could hire the scientific expertise required to launch his own space program. Until then, he would tell no one—not even his wife—about his ultimate goal. It took more than 40 years.
Part 1 of 12
Reinventing Space: Dramatically Reducing Space Mission Cost
James Wertz - Space News
(Wertz is president of Microcosm Inc. He is co-author of "Reducing Space Mission Cost," published in 1996, and has taught a graduate course at the University of Southern California on that topic since then)
Is it possible to dramatically reduce the cost of space missions and, if so, how do we go about it? By "dramatically reducing cost," I mean reducing the cost of space missions by a factor of two to 10 or more with respect to what similar traditional missions would cost, with some caveats. Let's recognize at the outset that essentially all space missions are run so as to try to minimize cost and most are well managed and efficiently executed. After all, no one starts out to create a space program that is too expensive and takes too long. If we're looking for essentially the same space mission we built last time, with the same requirements and same rules, it will cost about the same. What we're really after in reinventing space is trying to achieve the same broad objectives, but much quicker and at far lower cost. It's
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COMPLETE STORIES
Some aren't fans of NASA's proposed budget
T.J. Aulds - Galveston County Daily News
Despite Johnson Space Center Director Ellen Ochoa's claim that the area's NASA center fared well in President Obama's 2014 fiscal year budget proposal, the space-based business community and those in Congress aren't necessarily over the moon about the request.
NASA is seeking $17.7 billion, $55 million less than in the current budget. Of that, there's a request for monies so NASA can focus on a mission to capture a near-Earth asteroid and bring it into the moon's orbit for testing.
Estimates are that NASA's new asteroid initiative would cost about $2.6 billion during the next several years. Ochoa notes that the asteroid plan is one that would take advantage of systems NASA already has in development, including the Orion program and its associated heavy-lift rocket system, as well as the International Space Station.
'Purely political'
Still, the concept of lassoing an asteroid, as does the budget's priorities in general, has plenty of skeptics.
"This is the same budget that's been beaten down by the Senate and House for the past three years," Bob Mitchell, the president of the Bay Area Houston Economic Partnership, said.
His group has a large base of space contractors as members.
"The idea of roping an asteroid is purely political."
Mitchell, whose group in conjunction with Citizens for Space Exploration, will be in Washington later this month for a congressional NASA advocacy effort, said part of the trip will be to convince U.S. representatives and senators to refocus the NASA priorities.
"We want to explore (reaches of space). That's the important thing," Mitchell said. "We will let the elected officials decide what to debate the president on. The Congress and Senate have debated the president on this three consecutive budgets now, and (Obama) is 0-3 right now."
What about sequestration?
Mitchell said the budget also fails to take into account what impact sequestration will have and hurts funding for the space station and Orion programs while pushing for a more robust commercial space program. The ISS and development of Orion are based out of the Johnson Space Center.
Ochoa, while not commenting on Mitchell's concerns directly, thinks the budget and focus are on the right track and meet all of NASA's missions, including the call for space exploration.
She is encouraged that the budget for the asteroid missions doesn't require the creation of a new space vehicle or launch system, which "in this (fiscal) environment are not likely."
Given recent budget cuts, including what amounts to a 13 percent cut to the Johnson Space Center's operating budget because of sequestration, the proposed asteroid mission would go a long way to help boost morale at the center, Ochoa said.
"Having this mission to focus on would go a long way to improving morale," she said during a meeting hosted by the Bay Area Houston Economic Partnership, "especially given all the technical challenges the mission presents."
'Clear and unambiguous'
Members of Congress are leery of the NASA priorities in the budget.
U.S. Rep. Steven Palazzo, R-Miss., co-chairman of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology complained the idea to rope an asteroid was a surprise.
Members of the committee grilled NASA Administrator Charles Bolden last week and openly complained that the budget proposal would distract NASA from its primary missions as set out by Congress.
"I am disheartened by the administration's ever-changing goals and their lack of justifications and details," said Rep. Lamar Smith, R-San Antonio, the subcommittee's co-chairman. "The goal of NASA's human spaceflight program is to go to Mars and beyond on a path that includes returning to the moon or asteroids as necessary.
"This stepping stone approach for our exploration out of low-Earth orbit is clear and unambiguous. America is a nation of explorers, and space is the next frontier.
"While federal budgets will continue to be uncertain, congressional support for NASA's exploration mission is clear and unwavering."
Congressman Randy Weber, who represents Galveston County, said he will keep an eye on the budget.
"I want to vet NASA's budget request properly and get as much insight as possible from the science and space community to ensure this is a smart step for the United States' space exploration program," he said in a brief statement.
Coalition's support
The Coalition for Space Exploration, a pro-NASA business and space organizations group, came out in support of the budget proposal and the asteroid missions.
"A proposed new asteroid mission that could serve as a stepping stone for deep space exploration will help focus discussion on America's next steps toward deep space exploration," the coalition said in a statement.
"The coalition welcomes this as an opportunity for the administration and Congress to work toward bipartisan consensus on the pathway for the nation's space exploration program, ultimately leading to human exploration of Mars."
The coalition did express its desire for NASA to maintain its Orion development.
"Attention must be given to ensure that the capabilities, such as significant progress already underway on the development of (space launch system) and Orion, must remain on track to support the already-planned 2017 Orion and (launch system) test flight and 2021 crewed Orion exploration missions," the coalition said in its statement.
"There is reason to be concerned in that regard as a result of the proposed reductions in SLS and Orion program funding levels, which is less than the (fiscal year) 2013 budget."
NASA Said to Face Soaring Costs Without Budget Approval
Chris Strohm - Bloomberg News
(Previews an interview with Administrator Charlie Bolden on Bloomberg Television's "Capitol Gains," show airing on May 5)
The U.S. would have to extend a contract with Russia and pay "significantly more" to send crews into space if Congress doesn't approve the National Aeronautics and Space Administration budget request for next fiscal year, agency Administrator Charles Bolden said.
NASA needs full funding to develop a domestic industry to transport U.S. crews to and from the International Space Station and low-Earth orbit beginning in 2017, Bolden said in an interview on Bloomberg Television's "Capitol Gains," airing May 5.
Anything short of that would probably force the agency to renegotiate a contract with the Russian Federal Space Agency, known as Roscosmos, he said. NASA pays about $70 million for U.S. astronauts to have a seat on the Russian Soyuz spacecraft.
Having to renegotiate the contract "will allow the Russians to begin to believe that we are not committed to reliance on American industry and we're not committed to an American capability to get our own astronauts into space," Bolden said. "They'll name their price, and my guess is it will be significantly more than $70 million."
The U.S. retired its shuttle fleet in 2011 and had to rely on countries including Russia to ferry astronauts and supplies to the International Space Station. The Obama administration wants the private sector to take over those jobs so NASA can focus on missions to asteroids and Mars.
Budget Request
President Barack Obama requested about $17.7 billion for NASA for fiscal year 2014, which begins Oct. 1. The agency's budget for this fiscal year totals $17.5.
NASA announced April 30 it signed a $424 million contract modification with Roscosmos for crew transportation services to the International Space Station in 2016, with return and rescue services extending through June 2017.
NASA is relying on U.S. commercial spacecraft developers to help it end dependence on Russia. Bolden said "the big race" is between Boeing Co. (BA), Sierra Nevada Corp. and Space Exploration Technologies Corp., or SpaceX, to transport crews.
"There is no international space race," he said. "American companies are racing each other."
Chicago-based Boeing, Hawthorne, California-based SpaceX and Sparks, Nevada-based Sierra Nevada are "all racing to see who gets to the finish line and who wins a contract to carry American astronauts and our partner astronauts to the International Space Station, hopefully by 2017," Bolden said.
SpaceX a year ago became the first company to dock a commercial craft at the station.
NASA awards $1.8 million to UCF professor for study of long-range human missions
Mark Matthews - Orlando Sentinel
One of the major challenges of space travel -- especially to far-off destinations such as Mars -- is keeping human crews focused during dangerous voyages that could take months, even years.
To begin working that problem, NASA recently awarded two grants, worth a combined $1.8 million, to Eduardo Salas, a professor at the University of Central Florida who has studied ways to improve human performance in high-stress situations, such as law enforcement and piloting.
The goal is to find ways to better identify, and hopefully offset, mental hardships that could impact astronauts' ability to complete their mission, as well as determine the best method to split spacecraft operations between humans and computers.
"During long-term spaceflight team members will talk a lot, both during mission critical operations and their down time," he said in a statement. "By analyzing spontaneous verbal output in real-time communication, we can develop tools to predict problems before they arise."
The goal is to find ways to better identify, and hopefully offset, mental hardships that could impact astronauts' ability to complete their mission, as well as determine the best method to split spacecraft operations between humans and computers.
"During long-term spaceflight team members will talk a lot, both during mission critical operations and their down time," he said in a statement. "By analyzing spontaneous verbal output in real-time communication, we can develop tools to predict problems before they arise."
Satellite Repair Demos Resume Aboard ISS
Mark Carreau - Aerospace Daily
NASA flight controllers resumed activities with the Robotic Refueling Mission outside the International Space Station on May 1, using the Canadian robot arm/Special-Purpose Dextrous Manipulator (Dextre) combination to demonstrate a series of satellite repair capabilities.
The work — manipulating coaxial cable connectors, removing screws and insulation blankets that are representative of components found on spacecraft never designed for servicing in orbit — is scheduled to continue through the middle of next week, said Robert Pickle, NASA's Robotic Refueling Mission lead in Mission Control at the Johnson Space Center.
The $22.6 million, three-year Robotic Refueling Mission (RRM), a washing machine-sized three dimensional task board with a tool kit developed by the Goddard Space Flight Center, was launched aboard the space shuttle on STS-135, NASA's final station assembly mission, in July 2011. The hardware ultimately was placed on the station's starboard truss Express Logistics Carrier 4 (ELC-4) to provide power and data connections for a spacewalk and subsequent robotic operations.
The latest round of demos follows a breakthrough round of ground-controlled activities in January using the 70-ft.-long Canadian robot arm/Dextre combination to sever lock wires and remove a mock fuel cap to flow 1.7 liters of ethanol fuel into the RMM.
"What we have coming up are some of the finer tasks for this payload," Pickle said.
The two-armed Dextre extension was positioned over the ELC-4 work site on the eve of the latest exercise to demonstrate:
- Subminiature cap removal for simulated access to a satellite's electrical data system to expose a component failure, much as a mechanic would attach a diagnostic display cable to an automobile computer to isolate an engine problem. Dextre will be commanded to remove simulated coaxial radio caps and stow them in a receptacle on the RRM module.
- Small screw removal and storage. The fasteners, which must be unthreaded as they would be with a handheld screwdriver, are of the sort that might hold a protective cover plate to a satellite. The removed plate could expose a faulty spacecraft component for replacement. As with the subminiature cap removal, safe stowage of the screws is considered essential.
- Non-destructive removal of multilayer insulation (MLI), the flexible, protective thermal blanketing that overlays fuel valves, access ports and potentially repairable components. The challenge is to cut, peel and fold MLI so that it can be re-applied as repair activities are completed.
Houston Museum to Display Historic NASA Jet with Mock Space Shuttle
Robert Pearlman - collectSPAC.com
They say that everything is bigger in Texas and that certainly goes for Space Center Houston's newly-announced space shuttle exhibit.
Space Center Houston, which serves as the official visitor center for NASA's Johnson Space Center, revealed plans on Thursday to display its full-size space shuttle mockup atop the historic jumbo jetliner that ferried the real orbiters after their return from space and delivered them to their museum homes.
NASA transferred ownership of its original Shuttle Carrier Aircraft (SCA), a modified Boeing 747 jet, to Space Center Houston on Thursday, setting in motion the visitor center's plans to pair the replica shuttle it received last June with the airplane that landed in Houston five months later.
"This is an exciting day for Texans, as we accept the SCA from NASA and assume the awesome responsibility for its modifications, showcasing its legacy and adding a one-of-a-kind experience to our complex," said Richard Allen, president and CEO of Space Center Houston. "We look forward to accepting the challenge of raising funds for this amazing endeavor as we prepare for the next phase of this major expansion."
The new $12 million outdoor complex, named "The Shuttle and 747 Carrier," is to open to the public in February 2015.
"The Shuttle and 747 Carrier will give visitors the world's first and only all-access pass to an authentic and realistic journey through the inside of the Shuttle Carrier Aircraft as well as an unforgettable experience aboard the full-scale shuttle model," Space Center Houston stated in a release. "The up close and personal access to American aviation history will reveal the shuttle program's amazing ingenuity, clever innovation and awe-inspiring complexity."
An artist's rendering of the planned exhibit shows the 747 jumbo jet, known by its tail number "NASA 905," parked outside Space Center Houston where the space shuttle mockup sits today. A gantry-like structure sits next to the air- and spacecraft combo that will provide visitors the opportunity to climb inside both vehicles.
The carrier aircraft is currently at Ellington Field, home to Johnson Space Center's aircraft operations, located about 5 miles (8 kilometers) from Space Center Houston. To get the aircraft to the visitor center, its wings and tail will be removed, and its fuselage will be sectioned in three.
The jumbo jet is expected to be in place at Space Center Houston by this November. The work to hoist the 130,000-pound (60,000-kilogram) shuttle mockup atop the airplane will follow during the first quarter of 2014.
Before the model orbiter leaves the ground however, it will need to undergo some repairs and modifications, including the installation of attachment hardware to mount it on the back of the Shuttle Carrier Aircraft. Space Center Houston also plans to upgrade the interior of the mockup, including replacing its early-shuttle analog flight deck displays and controls with the "glass cockpit" digital version that was in use later in the program.
The shuttle mockup arrived in Houston by barge from the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex in Florida, where it debuted in 1993. Known then by the name "Explorer," it was designed and built by aerospace replica manufacturer Guard-Lee, Inc. using schematics, blueprints, and archival documents provided by NASA and the shuttle contractors.
NASA 905 was one of two Shuttle Carrier Aircraft in the space agency's fleet. The final ferry flight for the shuttle program delivered the retired Endeavour orbiter to Los Angeles for the California Science Center last year. The jumbo jet's final overall flight was in December, when it was flown for an hour-and-a-half proficiency flight from Ellington.
In service to the shuttle program for 35 years, NASA 905 flew 70 out of the 87 ferry flights during the space shuttle program's operational phase, including 46 of the 54 post-mission flights from the Dryden Flight Research Center in California to Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Converted from an American Airlines passenger jet, 905 was NASA's first SCA and it flew the 1977 approach and landing tests with the prototype orbiter Enterprise.
Space Center Houston plans The Shuttle and 747 Carrier exhibit to be more than a public attraction, but also serve as the centerpiece for new educational programs to inspire students to consider careers in math and science fields.
Canadarm on display:
Space shuttle robot arm unveiled at Canadian museum
Robert Pearlman - collectSPACE.com
The original Canadarm, the Canadian-built robotic arm that for 30 years was used to reach out from NASA's space shuttles to deploy and capture satellites, support spacewalking astronauts and help assemble the International Space Station, now has a new mission in its retirement: public outreach.
Canadian Space Agency officials unveiled the Canadarm's new permanent display at the Canada Aviation and Space Museum in Ottawa, Ontario on Thursday. Joining the event via a video broadcast from orbit, Chris Hadfield, the first Canadian commander of the International Space Station, participated by "sending the command" to reveal the arm's new exhibit.
"Let me send Canadarm its last command from space," said Hadfield as he simulated entering a command from a laptop aboard the space station. The video was timed with the curtain covering the Canadarm's display being pulled away.
The 50-foot-long (15-meter) Canadarm, which the Canada Aviation and Space Museum has displayed in a V-shaped floor-mounted case, was designed to operate much like a human arm. It has six rotating joints: two at the shoulder, one at the elbow and three at the wrist. In space, it could lift cargo weighing as much as fully-loaded bus while using less electricity than is needed to heat a tea kettle.
Hadfield said the Canadarm provided him the opportunity to become an astronaut.
"I am very grateful to the Canadarm itself — in a sense, it is because of Canadarm that I can even be in space," he said. "More than 30 years ago, when Canada contributed this magnificent, state-of-the-art technology to NASA, it opened the door for Canadian astronauts to exist."
"And about 17 years ago, I was the first lucky Canadian to operate the now legendary Canadarm," Hadfield said.
Five Canadarms — or as they were referred to by NASA, shuttle remote manipulator systems (SRMS) — were built and delivered to the U.S. space agency between 1981 and 1993. The arm now on exhibit was the first to fly in space, launching on the second mission of the shuttle program in November 1981.
In the three decades since, the SMRS on display, known by its serial number 201, flew 22 more missions mounted inside the cargo bays of all five NASA orbiters, Columbia, Challenger, Discovery, Atlantis and Endeavour. The arm's last flight in 2011 was on the final mission of Endeavour, when it had a hand, literally, in completing the assembly of the International Space Station.
Among the Canadarm 201's other mission highlights were the retrieval of the Long Duration Exposure Facility (LDEF) from orbit, the installation of the Canadian-built, two-arm robotic manipulator Dextre on the space station, and the addition of the Tranquility node and multi-windowed Cupola for the orbiting complex.
In total, Canadarm 201 logged over 215 days in space.
"Thousands of Canadians will soon walk through these doors [of the museum] and have the opportunity to learn and appreciate one of Canada's greatest achievements in the space industry," James Moore, minister of Canadian Heritage and Official Languages, said at the unveiling. "A marvel of technological innovation, created and developed by Canadians, the Canadarm is, simply put, a Canadian icon."
The original arm is now one of two on public display, the other exhibited alongside the retired shuttle Discovery at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum's Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in northern Virginia.
The last of the Canadarms to fly in space, the SRMS flown aboard the final space shuttle mission, STS-135 in July 2011, was shipped to NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston for engineering study and possible reuse on a future mission. One Canadarm was lost in flight with the destruction of space shuttle Challenger in January 1986. Parts from the fifth arm were used to construct a boom to inspect the orbiters' heat shield for any damage sustained in flight.
Before going on display at the Canada Aviation and Space Museum, Canadarm 201 underwent a careful evaluation at MacDonald, Dettwiler and Associates' (MDA) facilities in Brampton, Ontario. The Canadarm was designed, built and tested by Spar Aerospace, which was acquired by MDA.
In addition to now displaying the Canadarm, the Canada Aviation and Space Museum hosts the Canadian Space Agency's "Living in Space" exhibit with artifacts loaned by all of Canada's astronauts.
Astronaut MP Garneau snubbed at museum opening of Canadarm exhibit
Canadian Press
Marc Garneau — the only MP who's ever flown in space — is insulted that he wasn't invited to Thursday's opening of a Canadarm exhibit at a national museum.
Adding insult to injury, the Liberal MP says it was his idea to display the iconic robotic space arm at a public museum, rather than have it moulder in obscurity at the Canadian Space Agency's headquarters near Montreal.
Garneau is Canada's first astronaut and a former head of the space agency.
He operated the Canadarm on two of his three space missions.
Yet that wasn't enough to earn him an invitation to Thursday's exhibit opening at the Canada Aviation and Space Museum.
He blames Conservative partisanship for the snub, although the government insists it had nothing to do with compiling the invitation list.
"I think it's impolite, it's disgusting," Garneau said of the snub, accusing the government of being "hyper-partisan all the time."
"I'm not surprised by this government but I do seriously feel insulted," he added.
"I operated (the Canadarm) on two of my missions. I've been involved with the space program. It's because of my efforts that the arm is in the museum here in Ottawa rather than being at the Canadian Space Agency where nobody would have seen it."
The Canadian-invented robotic arm, featured on the new $5 bill, was a key part of NASA's space shuttle program for almost 30 years. NASA retired the arm in 2011.
Initially, the Canadarm was to have been sent to the Canadian Space Agency but Garneau said he wrote Industry Minister Christian Paradis urging him to ensure it was displayed publicly at a national museum.
During question period Thursday in the House of Commons, a Conservative MP lobbed a planted question about how the government intends to celebrate "this amazing Canadian invention."
As Canadian Heritage Minister James Moore rose to praise the new museum exhibit, Liberal MPs chanted Garneau's name.
"Members opposite can obsess about their caucus and maybe we will obsess about Canadian history," Moore said.
"Today we had the unveiling of the Canadarm at the museum and we look forward to thousands of Canadians coming through that museum, seeing the Canadarm and seeing its remarkable contribution to Canadian history."
Moore's spokeswoman later said invitations were issued by the space agency and the museum, which organized the opening.
"The minister's office was not consulted on invites whatsoever," Jessica Fletcher said.
A space agency spokeswoman said invitations were solely the museum's responsibility.
Another Liberal MP, Mauril Belanger was at the opening. The museum is located in his Ottawa riding and Belanger said the museum director informed him of the event. He was surprised when he discovered Garneau had not been invited.
"I believe he should have been there. I mean, come on, how many MPs have actually used the Canadarm in space?"
Fredericksburg students quiz astronauts
Zeke MacCormack - San Antonio Express-News
In an event they called awesome and inspiring, students in an acclaimed aerospace curriculum here spoke Thursday with space travel veterans Chris Cassidy and Eileen Collins.
Cassidy appeared at Fredericksburg High School on a video link from the International Space Station, at one point doing a weightless flip, as the craft orbited 260 miles overhead at a speed of 17,000 mph.
He fielded questions on relations among the six astronauts there, experiments they're conducting, their diet and recreational activities.
"Looking out the window, you just can't replace that," said the former Navy SEAL from Maine who became an astronaut in 2006 and is on his second trip in space.
Encouraging the students to think big, Cassidy, 43, predicted that lessons learned now will allow future generations to one day live somewhere other than Earth.
Quizzed face-to-face in the school auditorium, Collins, 56, a veteran of four space shuttle missions and the first woman to command one, said her orbital adventures left her happier, less self-centered and "a little more faith-filled."
The San Antonio resident was inducted last month into the NASA U.S. Astronaut Hall of Fame. She, too, said seeing Earth from afar was her favorite part of space travel, offering a perspective she called "mind-boggling."
"You can see that the Earth's atmosphere is very, very thin. It's almost like the skin on an apple," Collins said. "It gets a little bit scary when you think we live on a ball that's being hurtled around the sun, and is spinning, and what's protecting us is a little thin film of air."
The hourlong forum was arranged by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and U.S. Rep. Lamar Smith, R-San Antonio, who told the audience that mankind so far has only scratched the surface of "the infinitude of space."
The 1,000 students in the auditorium seemed engrossed.
"It was really interesting and cool," junior Haley Harris, 16, said as she departed.
Classmate Shree Ridley, 17, said: "It makes me want to shoot for the highest goal."
School Superintendent Marc Williamson also was buoyed, saying the linkup was a national recognition of "the quality of our high school aerospace program ... as a national leader, not only by NASA but also by the aerospace industry."
About 20 schools nationwide each year are picked by NASA to participate in the "in-flight education downlinks."
"We want the downlinks to be part of a larger opportunity to study science, technology and math, not just a blip," NASA spokesman Mike Kincaid said.
Smith nominated Fredericksburg High School because of the rocket-building class begun here 17 years ago, now known as "SystemsGo," which has expanded to more than 50 campuses across Texas.
"We've educated over 15,000 students since the program began," said Brett Williams, the course architect, who each summer tutors other educators on teaching kids how to build and launch rockets.
He credited Smith with introducing the program to Army officials at the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico, where it can launch rockets under an educational partnership with the Army.
One of them reached 36,000 feet and topped out at nearly twice the speed of sound, but often the vehicles explode at low altitude or don't even get airborne.
It's a trial-and-error learning process that hasn't resulted in any students becoming astronauts yet, but has helped several local graduates land high-paying jobs with aerospace and technology firms.
That process continued Thursday as about 160 students from eight area schools prepared but canceled a launch of 21 rockets north of town after the NASA event.
"We just made the decision to abort for the day because of the weather. It's too windy and there's a low ceiling," Williams reported by phone adding, "The next three days we intend to get them all tested."
Fredericksburg students chat with NASA astronaut
Eric Gonzalez - KENS TV (San Antonio)
Fredericksburg High School was command central on Thursday as students got a rare opportunity to talk to American astronaut Christopher Cassidy.
His mission: Work on experiments from the International Space Station, about 260 miles above the Earth.
The students' mission: Ask about life in space and other space-related topics.
"I was wondering if you could tell us about some of the research that is being done on the space station," one of the students asked.
U.S. Congressman Lamar Smith, R-Texas, is the chairman for the Space Science and Technology Committee. He led Thursday's assembly.
"The United States today unfortunately is having to pay Russia to take our American astronauts to the space station. But within three years, we're going to have our own rocket. We will be back to being the leader in space," Cassidy told to the students.
And that means the sky is the limit for budding space travelers.
"I hate to tell you Daniel, we don't shower on the ISS," Cassidy said over the large screen in the high school auditorium.
And while students got their questions answered about what it's like to work, eat and go to the bathroom aboard the International Space Station, they were also curious about acrobats on board.
"I'd like to see you do a front tuck," a student requested.
Robert Bigelow Plans a Real Estate Empire in Space
Adam Higginbotham – Bloomberg BusinessWeek
Robert Bigelow was no more than 9 years old when he heard his first atom bomb explosion. He was upstairs in his bedroom, in a two-story brick house in Las Vegas. There was a low rumble in the early hours of the morning; a bright flash seared the horizon. "All of a sudden," Bigelow remembers, "it lights up like daytime."
After that, there were dozens more explosions, out on the Nevada National Security Site just 75 miles away in the Mojave Desert. During the day, he and his classmates at Highland Elementary School were often sent out into the playground to watch as mushroom clouds roiled 40,000 feet into the sky.
The atomic tests were Bigelow's first encounter with the wonders of science. As he grew up in the Las Vegas of the early '50s—then still a small town—foretastes of the Space Age transfixed him: exotic jet planes screaming overhead from Nellis Air Force Base and stories of UFO sightings recounted by friends and family. At 12, Bigelow decided that his future lay in space travel, despite his limitations. "I hated algebra," he says. "I knew I was no good at it." So he resolved to choose a career that would make him rich enough that, one day, he could hire the scientific expertise required to launch his own space program. Until then, he would tell no one—not even his wife—about his ultimate goal. It took more than 40 years.
At 68, Bigelow is courtly and reserved; tall, thin and vulpine, with a thick head of silver and black hair swept back from his forehead and a crescent-shaped moustache trimmed around the corners of his mouth. His office, on the second floor of a taupe-colored mock Tudor mansion in suburban Las Vegas, is filled with bric-a-brac and gee-gaws. The leather top of his wooden desk is covered almost entirely by a dozen or more thin piles of documents, arranged into neat rows; in the space that remains, there are two telephones, a desktop calculator, and a green marble pen set, but no computer. "Oh," he says mildly, "I don't find the need."
Cutaway showing interior of Olympus habitat, which has a volume more than double that of the ISS
It's left to a pair of small but painstakingly detailed models, crowded into a corner by the clutter, to suggest where Bigelow Aerospace, founded in 1999, might be going. These are the designs for Bigelow's space station modules, the BA 330 and the Olympus, intended for use in low earth orbit and beyond as the first independently owned destinations in space. The modules will be far larger than the living quarters so far used in orbit. The exterior walls of the biggest single module of the International Space Station, the Japanese-built Kibo, enclose some 150 cubic meters, or about half of a squash court. The BA 330, by comparision, has the same volume as a small three-bedroom house—and the Olympus, at 2,250 cubic meters, would be large enough to contain the entirety of the ISS, twice over. "It could be a hospital, a dormitory, a warehouse … a spacecraft carrier," Bigelow says.
Unlike traditional spacecraft and space stations, which are restricted in size by the outer dimensions of the rockets used to deliver them into orbit, Bigelow's vessels are inflatable. Using the same principle as a football or a car tire, these "expandable habitats" are housed within an inner airtight bladder surrounded by a protective cocoon built from layers of foam and bullet-resistant Vectran fabric; in the center is a metal core containing electronics and equipment. The soft envelope of the habitat is folded tightly into the trunk of a rocket for launch and then released on arrival in orbit, where it's inflated with a breathable atmosphere, taking the shape of a giant watermelon. Internal pressure then makes the hull rigid to the touch, and the layers of protective material—up to 40 inches thick—make it safer than conventional aluminum modules yet, by volume, around 50 percent cheaper to launch. So far, Bigelow has spent a quarter of a billion dollars on the project, all of it from his own pocket.
Fifteen years ago, Robert Bigelow's ideas might have seemed unlikely to get further than the pages of a glossy prospectus, and all the more improbable when publicized as dreams of "hotels in space." But now he has both the tested hardware and the contracts to back his ambition. He's had two prototype habitats in orbit since 2007, launched from Russia on repurposed SS-18 "Dnepr" ICBMs. At the beginning of this year, he signed a $17.8 million deal with NASA to provide another for use on the ISS—the Bigelow Expandable Activity Module, or BEAM—to evaluate the technology for use as an astronaut habitat; and, at the end of last month, the agency selected Bigelow Aerospace as a partner to investigate commercial opportunities in space beyond low earth orbit.
Out there, Bigelow says, there are plenty of ways to make money—for example, mining the rare element Helium 3 from the surface of the moon—which will be feasible only with the facilities for living, working, and storage made possible by his inflatable technology. "I think expandable systems hold the key," he says. By the end of 2016, he expects to have two BA 330 modules docked in orbit, to form the world's first privately owned space station, Station Alpha. "Our long-term goal as a company is to have a lunar base that might be a modest size, initially, in somewhere around 2023."
Full-scale mock-ups of Bigelow modules
Although he'll be quite happy to sell habitats outright to his customers, he points out that for NASA—or the agencies of any other newly budget-conscious nations with ambitions beyond earth's atmosphere—leasing is by far the more affordable option. For only $51.25 million, Bigelow's sales brochure suggests, a client can travel to the Alpha Station and enjoy dominion over 110 cubic meters for 60 days.
"The main thing is trying to save them a lot of money on good quality hardware," he says. Bigelow's intention is to become the first full-service landlord in space. "Bring your clothes and your money. We provide everything else."
Before the creation of his aerospace company, Robert Bigelow was known locally as the idiosyncratic tycoon who had made his money from Budget Suites of America. The chain of long-stay motels—laundry, cable TV, and swimming pool included, slogan: "It's as suite as it gets"—often provides accommodation for temporary workers in Nevada, Arizona, and Texas. Budget Suites began with a single outpost in Las Vegas in 1987. But the foundation of his empire as a landlord—recently estimated to be worth $700 million—goes back much further.
Bigelow first chose a career in real estate because it was how his father, Robert L. Bigelow, a successful broker, made his living. In 1962 he enrolled at the University of Reno to study banking and real estate, but his father didn't live to see him graduate: At the age of 41, he was killed in a light plane crash in California. His son finally graduated from Arizona State University in 1967 and spent nine months back in Las Vegas trying to make it as a real estate agent, without much success. Then, at 20, with a new wife and a baby to support, Bigelow borrowed $20,000 from a hard money lender. "South of loan sharking but north of traditional banking," he explains. "It was at 10 percent interest, and 10 points."
He intended to use the cash to buy apartments to rent out, but property he could afford proved scarce. He watched his $20,000 dwindle until, with $14,000 left, in late 1968, he found a house with four apartments behind it. He did the cleaning and painting himself, and rented the units out on weekly terms. Bigelow had absorbed the principles of managing rentals from his grandfather, who had converted a single-story barn next-door to his house into a cluster of small apartments. "I learned, 'You'd better be there to show it; you'd better be there to collect the rent, and you'd better have something that works and is clean.' And then it didn't have to be fancy, so long as it was reasonable," Bigelow says. "And that was very important."
In a city better known for monumental hotel developments and Babylonian excess, this no-frills formula served Bigelow well. Although he lacked cash, he quickly acquired new rental properties all over Las Vegas. "I caught on to how to talk to sellers and convince them to sell to me on sweat equity," he says. "Little or no money down. The most extreme example was, I bought a couple of buildings for $140,000, and my down payment was 10 bucks." By 1970 he'd amassed $1 million in assets and raised the money to begin his first construction project, a 40-room apartment complex built on the site of his childhood home.
For the next 30 years, he kept buying and building in other sprawling Southwestern towns: Phoenix, Dallas, Fort Worth, San Antonio. The privately held Budget Suites chain, which put a recognizable brand on his expanding inventory of short-term-let apartments, put Bigelow on the path to billionaire status. He's lost track now, but thinks in total he's built 15,000 units, and purchased another 8,000. For years, he held on to almost everything he bought, but would eventually unload much of his housing stock in the boom years immediately before the 2008 crash. "People just really wanted to throw money away," he says. "So that was lucky."
By the early '90s, Bigelow had amassed a fortune large enough to dabble in philanthropy, and began funneling his money into extracurricular, extraterrestrial interests. Of all the UFO stories he heard as a boy, Bigelow recounts one in particular that had a profound effect on him. One night in May 1947, his maternal grandparents were driving down the remote Kyle Canyon highway, returning to Las Vegas after a trip to the mountains, when they saw in the sky ahead something they thought was an airplane on fire. But as it drew closer, they realized it was a huge and unidentifiable oval object, glowing bright red; when the terrified couple pulled over to the side of the road, it bore down on them, finally filling their field of vision, before at the last second executing an abrupt 90-degree turn and disappearing. Bigelow heard about the incident years later, from his grandmother; his grandfather never liked to talk about what he'd seen. "He was still bothered by it," he says, "because they both thought they were going to die that night."
The story kindled an interest in UFOs and unexplained phenomena that Bigelow has pursued ever since. In 1995 he set up the National Institute for Discovery Science, a team of scientists and investigators, including former FBI agents, dedicated to conducting research into alien encounters and out-of-body experiences. He's spent tens of millions of dollars gathering evidence "the hard way," he says. "Painstaking effort, doing all kinds of research." Bigelow frequently accompanied the NIDS teams on their investigations, flying with them to incident scenes on his private jet; he has personally conducted interviews with 235 different witnesses to paranormal events. "I've never had so much fun," he says. As for his own encounters, he will only concede, "Yes. I've had many anomalous experiences … that I want to keep private. I don't get into discussing those."
In 1996, Bigelow bought a 480-acre ranch in Utah from a family who had reported experiencing a frightening range of paranormal incidents, including cattle mutilations, unexplained lights in the sky, and objects that moved on their own. Bigelow now maintains this as what he calls a "living laboratory," with a perimeter patrolled around the clock by armed guards. As an example of the kind of work done there, he produces two 8 x 10 color photographs of a child's ball and jacks left unattended on a kitchen table at the ranch. The second picture appears to show that, in the few minutes between shots, when the room was empty, the items have subtly changed position. "We call this the jacks experiment," he says. "Really amazing."
In 1997, Bigelow provided $3.7 million to the University of Nevada at Las Vegas to start a Consciousness Studies program with the aim, he says, of establishing "whether there is a survival of your consciousness beyond your bodily death."
Today, the FAA directs all new reports of UFO sightings to another Bigelow-funded organization, Bigelow Aerospace Advanced Space Studies, of which he is operating manager. Bigelow is unequivocal about the evidence he's accumulated over the years: He's convinced of the existence of extraterrestrial life. "I have no doubt," he says. "Zero doubt."
In 1999, Robert Bigelow turned 55, and decided that the time was finally right for his long-simmering ambitions in space travel to be addressed in earnest. "I had some money to work with, and I felt that the clock had already ticked along quite a ways, and if I were gonna do something, I'd better fish or cut bait."
Bigelow had already spent a couple of years casting around for a promising aerospace business when he stumbled upon a magazine story about TransHab, an experimental NASA program developed for manned missions to Mars. One of the principal problems of these expeditions would be sending astronauts out with enough supplies and living space to sustain them on a round trip that might take years; the soft-walled, inflatable crew modules of TransHab were designed to be used as accommodation during the flight out, and then on the surface of the planet as a Martian base. Arranged vertically over three separate levels, and including a kitchenette, dining room, and gym, early TransHab internal layouts more closely resembled a conventional house than a spacecraft module. "And I thought, 'Wow! What a cool idea! This really makes so much sense,' " Bigelow says.
Congress, however, did not agree, and was already moving to cancel funding for the program when Bigelow called to arrange a visit to the TransHab team at Johnson Space Center. NASA administrator Daniel Goldin suggested rescuing the technology by offering it for development to a consortium of aerospace companies, including Mitsubishi, plus Bigelow, who attended meetings as an independent investor. "I had no employees at that time. I was just there as me," he says. When the corporations proved reluctant to put their own money into the program, the deal collapsed. But Bigelow was less interested in being a cost-plus contractor of the old school than in owning a technology he believed represented the future of space travel. So he decided to pursue the expandable habitat technology alone, with or without NASA's permission. He went back to Nevada and, in April 1999, quietly formed a new company: Bigelow Aerospace. Then he bought 50 acres of land in an industrial park in North Las Vegas, and set a handful of engineers to work on figuring out how to build an inflatable house that could fly in space.
But in 2002, NASA finally canceled the TransHab project, and Bigelow applied to license the technology, in exchange for an initial $400,000 fee and a commitment for a far more significant sum—what he now says was "tens of millions" of dollars—into a development program. Under the terms of the agreement, Bigelow was able to bring many members of the original TransHab team to Las Vegas, including William Schneider, the veteran engineer, by that time already retired from NASA to teach, who had overseen the agency's project from the start. The first prototype habitat, Genesis I, was successfully launched into orbit aboard a repurposed Russian ICBM in July 2006; Genesis II followed a year later. Bigelow was shocked. "I was totally prepared for abject failure."
Although he has no training in science or engineering, Bigelow insists on participating in every stage of development, from overall concepts to the smallest component parts. Of the 15 patents the company now holds in expandable habitats, 11, from the design for the external meteoroid and debris shield to an internal truss, are in Bigelow's own name. "I am not an armchair president of Bigelow Aerospace," he says. Today, Bigelow spends roughly 70 percent of his time at the aerospace plant in North Las Vegas. He's currently completing a huge expansion of the facility, which now covers almost half a million square feet. One morning in March, electricians are at work in the steel skeleton of Bigelow's new office there, on a mezzanine overlooking the factory floor, which opens out into a 12-story tower where vertical assembly of the habitats will take place. The outside of the tower bears the corporate logo, visible from several blocks away, the contrail of a rocket forming the "I" in the CEO's name. But within the razor-wire perimeter of the plant, one more distinctive icon is also visible. High up on the corners of the assembly buildings, and on the shoulder patches of the armed guards who patrol them, are black logos depicting the bulbous heads of creatures with saucer eyes: the popular image of an extraterrestrial visitor. As he escorts me back to the main gate, I ask a security guard what these signify. "It's a Mr. Bigelow thing," he says.
Bigelow's business model for his new venture has always been simply to export his terrestrial experience into space, creating multi-use rental buildings containing, for example, hotels to accommodate tourists or scientific laboratories for corporations and even countries without space programs. "It's just real estate in a different location. So you can sell these space buildings; you can lease these space buildings; the person that you lease them to can sublet them," Bigelow says. "You just better be sure that you have a way of getting back and forth to it. Otherwise, you're really screwed."
After the launch of the two Genesis prototypes, Bigelow's aggressive development program came to a halt as he waited for the rest of the commercial space industry to provide a viable way to deliver his habitats—and crews to run them—into space. In 2004 he offered up $50 million for America's Space Prize, which would go to the first company that could launch a vehicle capable of successfully transferring a crew to one of his habitats in orbit. But the five-year deadline came and went without anyone making a serious attempt to claim it. The recession hardly helped, and for a while Bigelow undertook layoffs and a scheme of "furlough Fridays."
Following January's NASA deal, and in preparation to begin production of the BA 330 module, Bigelow is hiring again. The BEAM module is scheduled for delivery to the ISS aboard a SpaceX Dragon rocket in 2015. And while the company collaborates with Boeing on the CST-100 crew capsule, designed to deliver astronauts to the ISS, Elon Musk also plans to have a manned rocket flying in two years' time. "Now there's a lot more credible vehicles out there," says Jay Ingham, Bigelow's vice president for assembly and engineering. "They're not done yet. But between Boeing and SpaceX, one of these guys is going to succeed in the very near future."
Bigelow is collaborating with Boeing on the design of the CST-100, a crew capsule that will deliver astronauts to ISS
William Gerstenmaier, NASA's associate administrator for human exploration and operations, says he chose Bigelow as the agency's lead in investigating commercial opportunities beyond low earth orbit precisely because of his independence and recent arrival in the field. "I wanted to pick someone that I thought would have a broader exploration focus, someone that I thought would be respected, had a good business sense, and could look much broader than any particular product line," he says. "He's been trying to do things on his own."
And Bigelow's fellow spaceflight entrepreneurs recognize that, while they have been working on the means to eventually take paying passengers into orbit, he's the only one to have built a potential destination to visit once they get there. Virgin Galactic's Richard Branson says he's already considering Bigelow's multiple-use orbiting platform as part of his space tourism business. "We haven't developed our own hotels," Branson says. "We would be much more likely to work with Bigelow in sending people to his. We'd be delighted to one day take people there."
If the company fulfills its current plans, Bigelow Aerospace will be managing its first property on the moon within a decade. By then, Bigelow will be 79. Even at that age, he still fully expects to be running the company that bears his name. "I do. I definitely expect to be. The rocking chair isn't for me," he says.
Before that, he'd also like to make sure he gets into space himself. He thinks he's fit enough; he'd be happy to test himself against whatever training regime was necessary. "I have kind of secretly wanted to," he says. "But in a serious mission, not a stunt or a very expensive ride."
Part 1 of 12
Reinventing Space: Dramatically Reducing Space Mission Cost
James Wertz - Space News
(Wertz is president of Microcosm Inc. He is co-author of "Reducing Space Mission Cost," published in 1996, and has taught a graduate course at the University of Southern California on that topic since then)
Is it possible to dramatically reduce the cost of space missions and, if so, how do we go about it?
By "dramatically reducing cost," I mean reducing the cost of space missions by a factor of two to 10 or more with respect to what similar traditional missions would cost, with some caveats. Let's recognize at the outset that essentially all space missions are run so as to try to minimize cost and most are well managed and efficiently executed. After all, no one starts out to create a space program that is too expensive and takes too long.
If we're looking for essentially the same space mission we built last time, with the same requirements and same rules, it will cost about the same. What we're really after in reinventing space is trying to achieve the same broad objectives, but much quicker and at far lower cost. It's not whether we meet the same numerical specifications, but whether we can use different processes and more modern technology to save the lives of more American soldiers in Afghanistan or tsunami victims in Japan, monitor the Earth's environment, create better global communications, or explore both Mars and the distant reaches of the universe in ways that are truly "faster, better, cheaper."
At some level, reinventing space means changing the culture, and that's a remarkably hard thing to do. These days, any time you mention "faster, better, cheaper" in a group, at least one person will respond with "faster, better, cheaper — pick any two." It's as though our modern space program is as good as it's ever going to be and the processes used to get there are as unchangeable as the laws of thermodynamics. Yet we know this isn't true in other fields. Computers are getting faster, better and cheaper every year, as are most electronics, such as cameras or televisions. Historical evidence suggests that space mission cost can be dramatically reduced and that lower-cost missions are becoming remarkably more competent, often by taking advantage of advances in modern materials, microelectronics and computer technology.
While the evidence suggests that it is indeed possible to dramatically reduce space mission cost, it is certainly not an easy thing to do. It takes good engineering, good management and probably an element of good luck to make progress. But it is also important. There are more things that we would like to accomplish in space than there are funds available to do them. The only way to fulfill the real promise of space is to do it "faster, better, cheaper."
This is the first in a series of articles intended to point out what appear to be the most likely ways to accomplish the goal of reinventing space and some of the successes and setbacks that have resulted from prior attempts. Subsequent articles will appear online at www.ReinventingSpace.SpaceNews.com.
Why should we reinvent space? It's remarkably challenging and there are lots of pitfalls along the way. Even in the worst economic forecasts, it is likely that U.S. Department of Defense and NASA budgets will be reduced by less than 10 percent. Reducing cost by 10 percent is far easier than reducing it by a factor of two, five or 10, so why would we want to take on such a challenging technical and management problem? If you believe your program's budget is secure and can accommodate some cost and schedule overruns, then it likely isn't worth the real effort and sacrifice required to change how you do business in space. However, if the mission is an important one, the budget is subject to more than the usual pressure, the mission spans multiple years or administrations, or your program or organization is competing for potentially dwindling funds, then it is important to look at ways to dramatically reduce cost. If your organization has multiple programs in various stages of development, the more traditional and more expensive ones will likely take the lion's share of the funds and the remaining programs will need to strongly reduce cost to have any potential of being funded. In addition, creating some much faster, much cheaper programs provides several secondary benefits:
· They can serve as backups or gap fillers for traditional programs.
· They can provide much more responsive and persistent coverage of critical areas or events.
· They can make use of newer technology or meet changing demands.
· They can potentially introduce technology or processes that can reduce cost on larger, more expensive programs.
A robust space program should be a mix of traditional large, probably expensive programs and some much lower cost, more rapid, more responsive programs.
How does a government or industrial organization get started on the process of dramatically reducing mission cost? Here is a first set of "rules," which will be expanded on in later articles.
1. Recognize the need. Recognize that the need is real and that it's worth some sacrifice in changing the way we do business in space. There are lots of objections to reducing space mission cost (these types of missions are less reliable, they don't meet the requirements, etc.) that are summarized on our website devoted to this topic, www.smad.com/reinventingspace.html, along with responses. If there isn't a really strong need, then it doesn't make sense to start down this path.
2. Make it a priority. Containing cost has been a priority on essentially all space programs, but it's usually the last priority. Instead, the first priority should be "meeting most of the broad mission objectives at dramatically lower cost," just as it is for new cars, new computers or almost anything else we design and build.
3. Start a cost-reduction program and fund it. If you have determined that there is a need for a new left-handed gizmo, you create a left-handed gizmo program and proceed to find out about all of the gizmos currently on the market and the research others have done in gizmo design and manufacturing. The same is true for serious cost reduction. A cost-reduction program, a "low-cost skunkworks," needs to be run by a senior, innovation-oriented engineering manager who meets regularly with other senior managers. Everything costs money to get under way, and reducing cost is no exception.
4. Set aggressive yet realistic objectives. If you want to have a real impact, you can't start building a new type of low-cost spacecraft on Day 1 and you can't study the problem for a decade. You need to find a reasonable balance by setting aggressive yet achievable objectives. In my view, a reasonable expectation would be to have a program in place for the future within six months, a strong impact on the organization within 12 to 24 months, and highly capable, dramatically lower-cost spacecraft on orbit in 24 to 36 months. Because this is meant to be a very pragmatic and practical activity, the very first objective needs to be to find out what can realistically be done in what time frame and at what cost.
5. Look outside your organization. Almost by definition, finding new technologies, new processes and new ways of doing business means looking outside your existing organization (or at your low-cost skunkworks, if it already exists). What have others done that might be applicable or modified to be applicable? What other approaches have worked well and what haven't, and why? Research and conversation is invaluable. Attend events like the Reinventing Space Conference in Los Angeles and the SmallSat Conference at Utah State University. As has been said before, "Six months in the laboratory can save you a week in the library."
This is the beginning of our discussion on dramatically reducing space mission cost. Future articles at SpaceNews.com will address various aspects of the topic including attitude, personnel, program, government/customer, systems engineering, mission, launch, spacecraft technology and operations.
Part 2 of 12
Dramatically Reducing Space Mission Cost — Attitude
To achieve our broad objectives at much lower cost and in less time, we need to change both the technology and the process by which we acquire and develop it. These articles will alternate between the two.
The most important element in reducing cost is the attitude of the organization that is doing the work of driving down cost. This could be either the organization that is buying the system, such as the U.S. Air Force or NASA, or the organization that is designing and building it, typically an aerospace prime contractor.
Historically, the organization that is the leader in creating much lower cost yet very capable space missions is Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd. (SSTL), founded in 1985 and still run by Sir Martin Sweeting. SSTL is now majority-owned by Astrium but retains a great deal of independence in its operations.
Other than its long history of building low-cost satellites, what is it that has kept SSTL at the top of this line of work for over 25 years? Does it happen to have the world's best satellite engineers or a magic wand used by its senior managers? Certainly, they are very good, but many space organizations worldwide also have excellent engineers and managers. I would argue that Surrey's principal advantage is the attitude of the people in the organization. They are proud of what they do and continue to take great pride in coming up with new, low-cost ways of doing business and building satellites. It is a challenge that those at Surrey enjoy, and they like taking on a "competition" that they very much want to win.
With the Surrey example in mind, here are some of the key components in creating the right attitude:
1. Make it important. In order to reduce cost and schedule, these have to be important to the system engineers, the program management and the procuring organization. We'll talk about some specific ways to do this in a later article, but we all understand that there are lots of ways to convey to employees, contractors and subcontractors what is really important. That's one of the things that leaders do best — convey a sense of what is important and necessary.
2. Avoid "designing to a reliability of zero." There is a sense in many areas of space technology that "so long as it works in the end, cost and schedule don't really matter." But to the soldier who was killed because the system wasn't there, it doesn't matter that it would have been a great system when it was finally launched (or when it was canceled due to cost). Mike Hurley and Bill Purdy of the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory expressed this approach of accepting endless delays and cost overruns as "designing to a reliability of zero" — i.e., for every year that the system isn't there, it has a reliability of zero to the end user that needs the system. Avoiding this pitfall doesn't mean that we should ignore potential problems and build unreliable systems just to get them done, but it does mean that we need to take into account the impact of delay and the potential for cancellation on the needs of those who may be dependent on the mission results.
3. Recognize that it's possible to do better and that this isn't a criticism of current or past programs. Technology advances occur in all fields, and we are continually learning more about how to create space systems better, faster and cheaper. Even though the space processes and technology that we have today have been created by some of the most capable and hardworking engineers and managers in the world, this doesn't mean that we can't do better as time moves on. As we mentioned in the introductory article, the refrain "faster, better, cheaper — pick any two" is both common and wrong.
4. Recognize that reducing cost has a price. Reducing cost and schedule is hard work. It takes real engineering, dedication and effort. This, in turn, means that we must allocate the resources and effort needed to achieve it. Reducing cost isn't free. However, even in the near term, this effort, implemented wisely, should result in substantial reductions in both cost and schedule.
5. Support others who are also trying to reduce cost. It's always hard to gain support for your approach or technology. If you support someone else's approach, you have the beginning of a coalition, and they are more likely to support your approach in return. Building a coalition helps move things forward.
6. Recognize that virtually any technique can increase or decrease cost. One of the reasons that reducing cost and schedule is hard work is that it requires finding the right balance and not just blindly obeying a set of rules or following a fixed recipe or process. It depends on how the process is implemented. For example, one of the system engineering approaches to reducing mission cost is to design with large margins such that we are less likely to fail tests, less susceptible to small variations, and don't need as many operational procedures to guard against going out of narrow boundaries. On the other hand, if we force electronic equipment to meet an environmental specification well beyond what it will ever see in practice, it can greatly increase cost and schedule. We have to look for a sensible compromise that meets our end objectives.
7. Believe in the future. If you believe that something can't be done, or shouldn't be done, or isn't worth giving up something else to achieve it, then it is likely that you won't be able to achieve it. In order to create a better future, the first requirement is to believe in it.
Our overall goal is to dramatically reduce space mission cost and schedule while at the same time achieving or surpassing most of the broad mission objectives and maintaining the standard of excellence for which we all have become justifiably proud. It is hard work and takes real effort and good engineering, but the first step to getting there is to have the right attitude.
Part 3 of 12
Dramatically Reducing Space Mission Cost — Systems Engineering Approaches
In the traditional requirements-driven process, we start by defining the broad requirements that a system must meet and then allocate or flow down these requirements to the various subsystems. The organization that is building the system attempts to meet these requirements with some margin and then stops, so as to minimize the cost of the system.
In general, the mission objectives are fuzzy — explore Mars or save lives after a natural or man-made disaster. However, the requirements are precise numerical values that the contractor must ultimately be able to prove that the system will meet. If the requirements are set too low, we may not achieve as good a performance as the system is capable of, and if the requirements are set too high, it may become dramatically expensive or even impossible.
Then there is the almost inevitable problem of "requirements creep," with the inevitable result of driving up cost and schedule. If the system becomes too expensive, there is the possibility that it will be canceled and then the capability will not exist at all. This is almost certainly not in the best interests of the end user. Air Force Gen. Kevin Chilton, former commander of U.S. Strategic Command, has often discussed the difficulties that these problems create for military procurement.
As with many areas of reducing cost, the key is to try to find a reasonable balance between what can be done economically and what we would like to achieve. Let's assume, for example, that for a ship tracking system, the goal is to achieve a geopositioning accuracy of 500 meters and that the accuracy depends primarily on the spacecraft's attitude determination system. Further, let's assume that Attitude System A has a cost of $400,000 and allows an overall geopositioning accuracy of 600 meters and Attitude System B has a cost $3 million but can achieve an accuracy of 400 meters. In the traditional approach, we would have no choice other than to use the more expensive option, but that may or may not be the sensible answer. If it's a $2 billion spacecraft, an added $3 million won't matter. If it's a $5 million spacecraft, the $3 million matters a great deal and could cause the project to be canceled.
One solution to this problem is trading on requirements, in which we go back and determine the impact of specific choices on both cost and mission utility, discuss the options with the end users or the procuring organization or both, and then try to find an intelligent balance. It may be that 600-meter accuracy isn't quite what we wanted, but it is better than not having ship tracking at all.
A second solution might be a multitiered requirement in which the system achieves 500-meter accuracy when it flies almost directly over the ship and achieves 800 meters when it is looking more toward the horizon. Thus, we might set up a requirement in the form of 500-meter accuracy on at least 10 percent of coverage passes and 800 meters on the rest of the passes. This strategy also prevents us from throwing away data that aren't quite what we wanted but are available much more frequently.
The multitiered requirement suggests another alternative: a capabilities-driven system in which we look at the mission utility of a system built with existing equipment and technology, potentially at dramatically lower cost. Instead of meeting a specific set of requirements, we design the system to provide as much capability as possible within tight (but not necessarily minimum) budget constraints. This is equivalent to buying a car that meets as many of our needs as possible, rather than going out and having a car designed and built to our specifications. We may find that the former can do more than we expected. In both the car and the spacecraft, advanced computer and software technology may allow the system to do more in some areas than we had expected and to provide some elements of unexpectedly high utility.
Setting Functional Requirements and Giving Reasons for Them
Related to the process of trading on requirements is the need to set functional rather than technical requirements and to document the reason for requirements. Setting functional requirements means specifying what we want to achieve but not how to achieve it. Thus, we might set a requirement on geopositioning accuracy but leave the choice of specific spacecraft attitude and position requirements to the contractor. We also want to specify why this requirement is what it is so that other engineers can go back and ask if those same conditions still apply. If the original conditions don't apply, we may be able to lessen the requirement without changing the level of utility that the system achieves.
Fly a New Computer Plus the One You Flew Last Time
This is an excellent technique for ensuring that you're using the most modern technology. Computers today are both light and cheap (relative to spacecraft costs). Flying a new one ensures that you are using nearly the latest and most capable computer technology, while flying the one you used last time ensures that you have a working computer and provides a backup in case of any computer failure. Of course, this can also be applied to other components as well.
Avoid Optimization
Demanding "optimal solutions" prevents standardization, hinders the use of nonspace equipment and requires that everything be uniquely designed for each specific application. An enormous amount of money and resources is often spent on achieving the last 5 percent of performance. Yet it is almost certain that that last few percent will have essentially no impact on the overall mission utility.
Use the Existing Knowledge Base
There is a tendency within large space organizations to want to invent from scratch every new technique that is to be used. But reinventing the wheel is rarely economical, or, as NASA Nobel laureate John Mather has expressed it, "Six months in the laboratory can save you a week in the library." Some of the most important approaches to building on existing knowledge are:
· Researching books and professional papers on reducing cost.
· Attending courses and conferences, particularly the Reinventing Space Conference in Los Angeles and the Small Satellite Conference in Logan, Utah. We want to reduce the cost on satellites of all sizes, but much of the knowledge base comes from small satellites.
· Using commercial software tools (much better than inventing your own).
· Becoming a part of the low-cost community (for example, by attending the above conferences and talking to everyone you can find).
· Taking advantage of the knowledge and experience of others. A great deal of material on the existing knowledge base is available at the Reinventing Space Project link below, including an annotated bibliography on reducing mission cost. You will certainly tailor the approaches of others to meet the needs of your organization or project, but it makes sense to understand what others have proposed or done and what has worked and not worked in practice.
Part 4 of 12
Reinventing Space: Dramatically Reducing Space Mission Cost — Programmatic Approaches
Make cost data known
One of the most obvious and simplest approaches to reducing cost, and also one of the hardest to implement, is to make cost data known. Asking engineers to reduce space mission cost without making the cost known is like saying that we would like you to reduce the cost of manufacturing a car but we're not going to tell you what it actually costs to build a car or the cost breakdown among the various elements. Nonetheless, it is extremely difficult to get mission cost data made public. Further complicating the situation, elements of the cost are often covered by other budgets, such as the cost of government personnel, testing costs covered by another budget or organization, or cost sharing between organizations. Some elements of cost may be proprietary and, in addition, it is often not in the best interests of the program for the full cost to become widely known and discussed. If the full cost becomes known, it has the potential to increase the level of scrutiny and may increase the risk of program cancelation. Nonetheless, it is very hard to reduce cost when cost data are known, and virtually impossible when they are not.
Disaggregation
This refers to the idea of taking a large mission and breaking it down into a number of smaller missions. There is an ongoing debate over whether this will reduce cost. After all, the original intent for aggregating multiple capabilities into a single large spacecraft was to reduce the inherent overhead, reduce the number of launches and therefore reduce system cost. Like many other approaches to cost reduction, disaggregation may or may not reduce cost, depending on how it is implemented. If we maintain all of the same rules and procedures and take a decade or more to build each of the disaggregated smallsats, then cost savings are unlikely. However, there is ample evidence in the community that smallsats can be built in a much shorter time and for dramatically lower cost than larger, traditional spacecraft. (The Microcosm/USC Reinventing Space Project is engaged in a program to quantify the extent of the cost reduction.)
Irrespective of the specific processes and rules, there are a number of inherent economic advantages to replacing a large satellite having, for example, a 15-year life with a set of smaller satellites, presumably having shorter lives:
· Large satellites are typically designed and built over a decade or more, which means that billions of dollars are spent before there is any return on investment. With a series of small satellites the expenditures are spread out over the life the program, which both delays the expenditures (inherently reducing the cost) and allows the build rate to be adjusted to the actual lifetime and needs of individual components.
· The series of smallsats can take advantage of technology advances over the course of time. New technology can both reduce cost and increase performance, just as it does in cell phones, computers and TVs.
· Similarly, a series of smallsats can respond to evolving needs. With traditional, long-lived systems we have no way of knowing in advance what region of the world will be important or what type of information will be needed. Consequently, we try to cover the entire world, all the time, with every possible sensor we might need. It would be much more economical if, at least in part, we could cover regions or events with those sensors that provided the information that was needed when it was needed.
· A launch failure of a large single satellite means that the end user will be without that capability for many years. Small satellites can be built in a much shorter time and since there may be multiple satellites on orbit or nearly ready to launch, a launch failure represents only an incremental reduction in performance and a small increase in overall mission cost. The smallsat constellation is much less "fragile" and more robust than its more traditional monolithic counterpart.
· Even if there are no launch or on-orbit failures, 15 years after the successful launch of a large satellite we have a spacecraft built with 25-year-old technology, meeting 25-year-old mission needs (when global warming wasn't a real concern and the Soviet Union was the major adversary of the United States), and no one left who knows how to build it. A series of small satellites can support more nearly continuous production and can respond to both advancing technology and changing mission needs.
Microelectronics allows smallsats to do a great deal. Nonetheless, it is important to note that there are some missions that simply can't be accomplished by small satellites and for which large traditional satellites will still be needed. For example, diffraction limited optics and power-aperture requirements for communications are laws of physics that we cannot avoid. Nonetheless, as we will see in the fifth article, there are ways around some of these issues as well.
Make greater use of smallsats for test and operations
In addition to performing some of the functions of traditional satellites, smallsats allow us to do some things that simply can't economically be done with traditional large satellites. A constellation of a dozen smallsats can provide observations of an important area on the Earth every 20 minutes, 24 hours a day, at a fraction of the cost of a single large satellite that may make one observation every other day. Smallsats can also often be used for rapid test missions to validate technology that can be used to reduce the cost of larger systems.
Reduce the cost of failure
The space spiral that drives costs continuously higher is driven in large part by the fear of failure. But major breakthroughs in either performance or cost require accepting the possibility of failure, particularly during tests or in early missions. A good example of this is the early development of Soviet launch vehicles that had many initial failures followed by a truly excellent success record. To the extent that we do low-cost testing or fly more missions at much lower cost, we will reduce the inherent risk associated with the possibility of failure. Anything that helps us reduce the cost of failure will also help drive down cost.
Compress the schedule
One of the reasons that the Apollo program was done within budget is that it was done very rapidly. There are less overhead costs, less time to spend money, and less time for the "standing army" to drive up cost. Of course, schedule compression must be done with care. We must also expedite decision-making and reduce the amount of work required so as not to kill the engineers in the process. Another advantage of shorter programs is that they extend over fewer funding cycles and fewer changes of either administration or key personnel. This, in turn, means fewer changes in overall program direction and a more focused project. All of the above help to reduce cost and schedule and also reduce the potential for overruns or program cancellation.
Provide continuous, stable funding
This does not reduce cost per se, but avoids cost and schedule overruns. Stopping and starting a program dramatically drives up cost and increases schedule well beyond the length of the schedule break. When a program is stopped, the people involved go on to another program or may leave the company or the aerospace field altogether. Small companies may go out of business. When the program restarts, many of these people will not be available to come back. (Their new program or company may not be enthusiastic about letting them go and they may have become disenchanted as well.) It takes both time and money to assemble a new team.
While there is almost always an attempt to document the status of the program before it stops, this documentation is essentially never as complete as one would like and key issues, such as the reasons for specific requirements, are often never documented. The new team is left to reinvent the program and will likely need to redo many of the critical trades and design elements. This is both time-consuming and expensive and is likely to lead to somewhat different choices than those that were made previously.
Some program breaks are forced by external circumstances, such as funding being unavailable. However, there are a number of things that can be done to lessen the probability of program breaks. These include:
· Make major decisions away from funding boundaries.
· If possible, provide multiyear funding.
· Keep the program funded while decisions are being made.
The last item is particularly important because it puts pressure on the decision-making community to make decisions promptly.
We should emphasize again that there is no single solution to reducing space mission cost and schedule. It is not simply a matter of disaggregation or using smallsats or compressing the schedule. We need to use both processes and technology that are applicable to the mission, the organization, and the needs of the end user. By looking at all of these, we can find ways to both shorten the schedule and dramatically reduce mission cost.
Part 5 of 12
Reinventing Space: Dramatically Reducing Space Mission Cost — Mission Design
One of the most important elements of reducing mission cost is considering the possibility of alternative orbits. Traditionally, the orbit is selected to provide the best mission performance with relatively little regard to cost. However, orbit selection, particularly for low Earth orbit (LEO) missions, can have a significant impact on mission cost in several ways:
· The cost of getting to orbit and maintaining the orbit over the life of the spacecraft.
· The number of satellites needed to provide the appropriate coverage.
· The cost in terms of impact on the spacecraft design.
· The potential for creating or colliding with orbital debris, which can prematurely end the life of the spacecraft.
Lower the cost of getting to orbit
The orbit for science missions is often chosen as the best orbit for that mission irrespective of cost, in part because the "cost" of an orbit tends to be intangible. This is the reason for introducing the orbit cost function, which is the ratio of the mass required in LEO, due east from the launch site, to the total spacecraft mass needed in any given operational orbit. For example, going to geosynchronous orbit (GEO) requires putting into LEO about five times the mass ultimately required in GEO. Going to the surface of the Moon requires about eight times the mass in LEO that will ultimately end up on the surface of the Moon. This implies an orbit cost function of about five for GEO and eight for the surface of the Moon.
As an example of the potential use of the orbit cost function, consider a scientific satellite for which GEO or one of the Lagrange points is the ideal location due to excessive light interference from the Earth. However, if we could get the same effect in LEO if we tripled the mass of the spacecraft by adding shields or baffles with twice the original spacecraft mass, then we could potentially be much better off. We would still be launching only a bit more than half the mass of the more traditional mission, and shields or baffles are typically much lower cost than most other spacecraft components. In addition, we're in a very benign radiation environment and more uniform thermal environment, and we're in a regime where it is at least possible to get at the spacecraft in the future if something goes wrong. I don't want to suggest that all scientific spacecraft should be in LEO, but that option should be a part of the cost reduction trade for many missions.
Adjust coverage to meet current needs
Traditional Earth observation missions want to last for a decade or more and therefore need to blanket the entire Earth all the time with every sensor that will be needed in the future. (Because the spacecraft themselves are individually very expensive and effectively irreplaceable, the system as a whole tends to cost many billions.) If we are instead able to respond directly to world events, this cost can be dramatically reduced by both reducing the amount of coverage that is needed and adjusting that coverage to meet current needs. For example, at the present time, coverage of northern Africa and the Middle East is particularly important. Using a prograde repeat coverage orbit can provide five or six observing opportunities per day of this region with a single satellite versus one opportunity every other day or so with a satellite in a traditional sun-synchronous orbit.
Fly low
There are several substantial advantages for LEO satellites in orbits below 400 or 500 kilometers altitude. First, we can get comparable resolution with a much smaller and, therefore, lower cost instrument. If we go from a traditional 800-kilometer altitude to 400 kilometers we can get the same resolution with an instrument that has half the aperture and half the linear dimensions. As the payload gets smaller, so will the spacecraft bus. Even if we don't use any of our tricks for reducing small satellite cost, traditional cost models suggest that reducing linear dimensions by a factor of two will reduce volume and mass by a factor of eight (most spacecraft have about the same density) and cost by a factor of about eight as well. For active payloads, such as radar or lidar, the effect is even larger. Active payloads typically require high power, and reducing the altitude by a factor of two reduces the power required by a factor of 16.
There is a second major effect of flying low that may have an impact on overall mission cost. By flying below 400 or 500 kilometers, the spacecraft will be in a regime that has at least an order of magnitude less debris than at more traditional altitudes of 600 to 800 kilometers. This will be true in the future as well. Additional collisions or satellite breakups may dramatically increase the debris levels at higher altitudes because, once created, debris can remain in these orbits for many hundreds of years. Below 400 or 500 kilometers, debris will re-enter the atmosphere quickly and, in any case, will be swept out of orbit by the time of the next solar maximum. Satellites in this regime will not encounter large amounts of debris and cannot create a long-term debris problem. It will take more propellant to keep them at this altitude, but that is really a matter only of launch cost, since the propellant itself is cheap and most observation spacecraft will already have a propulsion system.
Use a shorter mission design life
Traditionally, we attempt to make the mission design life as long as possible so as to maximize the use of each satellite and minimize the number of satellites needed to provide continuous data. Up to a point, this makes sense. We certainly don't want a mission life of a month or two if we're looking for continuous, ongoing monitoring of an event or region. However, as the design life gets longer, we need to begin using redundant components and more extensive mission assurance procedures. Redundancy can be good, but it is never quite as helpful as we think it should be. Having redundant components means that we need both switches and sensors to choose between them, and these represent potential new failure modes. In addition, physical redundancy protects us only against random failures, not against design failures that will be in both the primary and redundant units. Having a shorter design life has several advantages:
· Allows us to make use of newer technology, which will typically be more capable at lower cost.
· Allows us to more directly match the spacecraft, the orbit and the mission to meet current needs. Many of today's spacecraft were designed when global warming was essentially unknown and the biggest threat to America was the Soviet Union.
· Allows us to maintain a continuous production line. It is the production line that helps us drive down the cost of cars, airplanes and nearly all other elements of modern technology.
· Reduces risk by having another spacecraft in the pipeline in case of a launch or on-orbit failure.
· Allows us to learn from on-orbit experience and apply that knowledge much sooner. As with many elements, the key is to find the right balance by having a design life that is shorter than traditional systems but not so short as to drive up cost by needing too many spacecraft.
· Use multiple sources of data
Some data are efficiently collected by satellites and some are more efficiently collected by aircraft, ground sensors or other means. Our goal is to satisfy the needs of the end user as effectively and as economically as possible. Therefore, it makes sense to define the mission in such a way that data from multiple sources can be used. This intermingling of data may be done by the end user, by the operations activity, or by some other operation. The key point is to design the space system such that it supports and enhances the potential for using multiple sources of data and keeps cost down by not duplicating data that are more economically available elsewhere.
One final note on mission design is to look at ways to reduce cost in each of the elements of the mission. If we are going to make a dramatic reduction in mission cost, it isn't enough to simply reduce the cost of the spacecraft bus, for example. We also have to reduce the cost of the payload, the launch, the ground segment and mission operations. We need to tackle all of the pieces and, of course, be sure that they all operate together to create a mission that retains a high level of utility while strongly driving down cost.
Part 6 of 12
Reinventing Space: Dramatically Reducing Space Mission Cost — Traditional Large Missions
First, we should make the definitions clear. Many of the methods we have discussed previously are applicable primarily to smallsats, which are usually, though not necessarily, physically small spacecraft similar to a NASA Class D mission, low-priority, high-risk payloads for which many of the traditional rules and requirements do not apply. Smallsats have a greater implementation risk, but an analysis of long-term performance by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center has shown that the reliability of smallsats is essentially comparable to that of more traditional missions.
Fatsats are usually, though not always, physically large (but not overweight) spacecraft characterized primarily by having multiple payloads, a long mission lifetime and the requirement to obey all of the most stringent rules and requirements of long-lived, expensive spacecraft, such as a NASA Class A or flagship mission. Reducing the cost of fatsats is particularly challenging specifically because of the desire to not change any of the rules, procedures or even technology and the high mission assurance requirements. Due to the high cost, the fatsat cannot be allowed to fail, but of course that is what has created much of the high cost in the first place.
Trimsats
Clearly, if we don't change anything about the fatsat except for minor modifications in the design or manufacturing, we also won't make dramatic changes in the cost. What can we do that leaves all of the "rules of engagement" intact but still has a dramatic impact on cost? Certainly it's a challenging problem — but perhaps not impossible.
To make the discussion more specific and a bit easier, let's assume we have a large Earth observation spacecraft weighing 5,000 kilograms, flying at 800 kilometers, having a design life of 15 years, a resolution with the primary instrument of 0.5 meter at nadir, and a first flight unit production cost of $1 billion. Because of budget cuts and sequestration, we need a dramatic cost reduction (by a factor of two to 10), but we don't want to change any of the traditional rules for this flagship mission. If we keep all the rules intact, then the traditional cost models will also apply. For most of the traditional cost models, the principal determining factor in the spacecraft cost is the mass, and the cost varies approximately linearly with mass over a rather wide range.
One option is to reduce the altitude from 800 kilometers to 400 kilometers. To achieve the same 0.5-meter resolution we would need a primary payload instrument that has only half the aperture and, consequently, about one-eighth the volume and mass. This will reduce the entire spacecraft mass by a factor of about eight, to 625 kilograms, and the cost to about $125 million. (One could argue that not all of the spacecraft subsystems will shrink proportionally, so we might have to reduce the altitude to, say, 350 kilometers.) We also propose to reduce the design life to only five years in order to greatly reduce the level of redundancy and therefore the mass and cost by an additional 20 percent, to 500 kilograms and $100 million, respectively. Because we have come down in altitude by a factor of two, we will need two spacecraft to cover the full swath width previously covered by one and we need three times as many to meet the full design life of 15 years. So our first-round estimate is six "trimsats" for $600 million. (They aren't smallsats because they still follow all of the rigorous design rules of the traditional missions, except for the reduced design life.)
But multiple spacecraft offer some additional, and very real, economic advantages. Building multiple spacecraft always saves money relative to building a single one. This is expressed by a "learning curve" that takes into account both actual learning on subsequent units and also things like tooling and spares that can be amortized over more spacecraft. A typical learning curve for spacecraft is around 90 percent, which means that the average cost of all of the spacecraft is reduced to 90 percent of the previous value every time the number of spacecraft is doubled. For a $100 million first production unit cost and a 90 percent learning curve, the total cost of six spacecraft will be $457 million and the cost of the sixth unit will be $65 million. If I want to build a spare spacecraft, it will cost only $64 million additional for a total cost of $521 million for seven units. The average cost of the seven spacecraft will be about $75 million each.
There is another purely economic advantage as well. Originally, we had to spend the entire $1 billion "today," before we got any return on our investment. But the six-spacecraft purchase is spread out over 10 years (two now, two more in five years, and the last two in 10 years). As anyone who watches the lottery will tell you, paying a winner $1 billion over 10 years costs the payer much less than paying the whole $1 billion today. If the government had lots of excess money lying around and wanted to use it right away to stimulate the economy, our $1 billion up-front expense would be a nice way to do it. But if we have to borrow that $1 billion from the Chinese at 5 percent interest and pay it back over 10 years (the same time span over which we're paying for the six trimsats), the total cost for our one fatsat will be $1.3 billion. If we buy seven trimsats (six operational ones plus a spare), it costs us only $520 million, or 40 percent of what a single fatsat would cost under the same payment conditions. We have substantially reduced both the cost and the mission risk and transformed a potentially devastating launch failure into something with only a moderate economic impact, rather than a catastrophic mission impact. And Congress is much happier, having to fund only the $125 million (or possibly $250 million for two) right now, rather than the full $1 billion.
As we discussed previously, going with more spacecraft spread out over time has quite a few other advantages as well:
· Allows us to maintain a continuous production line and therefore knowledgeable people who know how to build the spacecraft.
· Allows the potential of introducing new technology along the way, or modifying the mission to meet changing needs.
· Allows us to adjust the launch rate to match the actual on-orbit life rather than the design life (most spacecraft outlive their design life; for example, LandSat 5 just set a record for operating 29 years with an initial design life of only three years).
· Reduces risk by having another spacecraft in the pipeline if something does go wrong.
· Being at a lower altitude also means that we have effectively solved the orbital debris problem for the trimsats, although there is a cost in terms of added propellant. The delta-V needed to maintain the 400-kilometer altitude ranges from about 5 to 50 meters per second per year, depending on the satellite and the time in the solar cycle.
· Disaggregation
An alternative to building multiple smaller spacecraft that each do the same job as our original fatsat is disaggregation — i.e., breaking up our original spacecraft along functional lines and having one, or possibly two, functions on each of many small spacecraft. (See the fourth article in this series for a more detailed discussion.) We also have the option to mix the two approaches. Some of the functions of the original spacecraft may benefit from flying low while others may do better at a higher altitude. Similarly, the optimal design life may be different for different functions. Breaking our original fatsat into various pieces allows a great deal more flexibility and robustness and has the potential to substantially reduce cost, even if we don't change the rules of the game.
Other Approaches
Thus far, we have applied only the approaches of flying low and reducing the mission design life to build multiple trimsats and therefore take advantage of the learning curve and spreading the costs out over time. Other than that, trimsats are following the traditional program rules. However, the cost of an individual satellite has come down from about $1.3 billion to about $75 million, the total cost has been spread out over time, and we have significantly reduced the risk by reducing the required design life, having a spare spacecraft, and reducing the amount of money at risk. (Numerically, risk is the probability of failure times the consequences of that failure.) All of this makes many of the other approaches more reasonable to consider, such as trading on requirements, considering multitier requirements, setting functional rather then technical requirements, making cost more important, providing stable funding or using multiple sources of data (particularly because new types of data may become available over time). All of this can begin to get us back to where we would like to be — creating far-lower-cost spacecraft where a launch failure or debris collision is certainly not good but is also not a threat to national security or the long-term continuity of critical science data.
Multiple Fatsats
The same learning curve that we used to reduce the cost of the trimsats could, of course, also be applied to the fatsats themselves to reduce cost. For example, with the assumed 90 percent learning curve, five fatsats could be bought for $3.9 billion and a spare would be an additional $650 million. If we want all five for the entire 12 years, then our initial outlay before any return on investment goes from $1 billion to $3.9 billion. (And the $3.9 billion becomes $5.1 billion when paid for over the next 10 years.) If we use them serially spread out over time, we are buying the same satellite to be used for the next 75 years. In contrast the 30 trimsats cost a total of $1.8 billion over 10 years, the first five cost $390 million, and we really do have a trimsat production line under way.
Part 7 of 12
Reinventing Space: Dramatically Reducing Space Mission Cost — Personnel
In a sense, the personnel issues associated with dramatically reducing space mission cost and schedule are pretty straightforward:
· Make it somebody's job to get it done.
· Assign a small, preferably collocated, team to do it.
· Give the team moderate funding and a reasonable (but short) schedule to get it done, empower its members to make many of the decisions with minimal oversight, and reward both people and organizations for getting it done.
· Let the team do it and enjoy the results.
Both the government and large organizations would much prefer to depend on rules, regulations, processes and procedures, but the reality is that wars are won, inventions are made, new businesses are created, and creative ways to change how we do business in space are developed by motivated individuals who are out to get the job done. This means that individuals and small teams must be empowered to get things done and be motivated to do them.
Make It Somebody's Job
As we argued in the first article, it is important to get started by making it somebody's job to get it done. This lead person will need access to and strong support from senior management and the senior system engineers, but also should be outside the structure of a major program. (If he or she also has a central role in a major program, the person won't have the time for the reducing cost task and will be pulled in multiple directions by their program, for which reducing cost is unlikely to be task No. 1.)
Select, Motivate and Empower a Small Team
A cast of thousands isn't really a big help in this process. A small team works much better and can dig into the real issues and get the job done. Of course, it also requires that we give team members the things they need to get the job done. This means they need to have a moderate budget to get some studies under way and start some serious mission and systems engineering. They'll need to talk to lots of people outside the organization, go to conferences, talk to a few more people, and visit other organizations that are doing similar things. At some point a set of alternatives, with risk and rewards clearly spelled out, needs to flow up to management for a decision on how to proceed. (These are decisions such as refining the team's objectives, defining what program or problems to tackle first, and determining whether it will be done primarily internally or by making agreements with other organizations. After all, reinventing the wheel may not be the wisest choice if a compatible partner organization already has some pretty snazzy wheels in its inventory.) When this has been done, the team needs to get a realistic budget and schedule to begin to create real hardware and software.
Having set the objectives and the broad outline of the project, we need to empower the team to step out and get the job done. Once that has happened, motivation should largely take care of itself. The team has a critically important job to do and has been given the resources and authority to do it. It seems like a job that most of us would want to have. If we've selected the right team, the motivation is there.
It also helps to have a collocated team. The best communications are face-to-face, and having the team collocated avoids a sense of "us vs. them." On the other hand, it's really the communication that matters. The amateur radio satellite organization AMSAT doesn't seem to need collocation because its members communicate essentially continuously and get to know each other well. Similarly, someone who knows the other team members well doesn't need to be there all the time. But being in the same room from time to time does wonders for resolving differences of opinion, bonding the team and solving problems quickly.
Reward Low Cost
Personnel and groups should be rewarded for major reductions in cost and schedule. As a counter-example, the reward for not spending all of your department's computer budget by the end of the year is typically having a smaller computer budget the following year. Amazingly, in most departments, the computer budget is always spent by the end of the year. A much better approach would be to split the savings between the organization, in order to reduce the overall budget, and the department end-of-year party fund or divide it among team members as a bonus, and not reduce the computer budget for next year.
Rewards don't need to be money. Give whoever came up with the best idea for significantly reducing cost or schedule the parking space next to the door and let the department manager park in the back lot. (Actually, it would probably be best to give the department manager a bit of a reward as well. In the end, you want both the individuals and their managers to be pleased with the result.) Many small-satellite builders take great pride in building high-quality, low-cost satellites in a very short time. It is something they have learned how to do and that much bigger, better-funded organizations still don't know how to do. Recognizing this excellence can be a reward in itself. The real secret to reducing space mission cost is to empower individuals and small teams, motivate them to reduce cost, get out of their way, and then reward them for achieving it.
Can it really be as simple as that? In some respects, no. There is still a lot of system and mission engineering to do and a lot of rules and procedures to undo. If we've selected the right team, the system and mission engineering will be challenging but workable. Changing the rules by which we do business is much harder. After all, the rules and procedures and policies and regulations were all put there for good reasons. Unfortunately, they may or may not be applicable in the current circumstances and may be getting in the way of making the dramatic progress we need to make.
This suggests a process that I'll call "trading on procedures." We have talked previously about the need to trade on requirements, i.e., to look at each requirement, determine why it is needed, and then determine for any given system the cost implications of that requirement and whether we need to adjust it to meet our end objectives. We need to do the same thing with our procedures and rules. First, we need to determine why those procedures and rules are what they are and where they came from. Then, for each mission, we need to ask, does that procedure make sense in this circumstance? Many procedures were put in place specifically because space projects cost billions of dollars and we wanted to be 100 percent sure they would always succeed. But these procedures may be a large part of the reason that the program cost billions in the first place, and, of course, there have been failures and errors even in the most expensive programs. It is exceptionally hard for management to do, but it's better to trust people than to trust procedures.
The bottom line is that, yes, it really can be as simple as finding the right people, giving them the resources and the authority to get the job done, and then letting them go do it. Not every project will succeed every time, but that's also the case with more traditional programs. If we dramatically reduce the cost and allow multiple spacecraft to be built, then we also reduce the risk by having backups available when we need them. Failures are never good, but they are much less of a problem if we have a backup available and ready to go.
Part 8 of 12
Reinventing Space: Dramatically Reducing Space Mission Cost — Spacecraft Technology
This article discusses using spacecraft technology to reduce cost. Within this arena, there are a great many approaches that can have a major impact on cost, schedule and performance.
Make More Extensive Use of Microelectronics
Since the opening of the space program, one of the great advances in modern technology is the dramatic rise in the use and capability of microelectronics. Although I haven't seen it yet, I don't believe any of us would be all that surprised if the next $10 toy we buy for our children or grandchildren could recite all of Shakespeare's plays in six languages and in response to verbal and sensory clues in the world around it. Making extensive use of this technology for spacecraft offers enormous advantages — systems that are smaller, lighter-weight, lower-cost and exceptionally powerful and versatile.
And yet traditional space programs have been very slow to take advantage of this enormous capability. This is in part because of a perceived need to fly only components that flew on our grandfathers' spacecraft and in part because of real technical issues such as thermal problems or the need for radiation hardening in some orbits. The thermal and mechanical problems are pretty straightforward to solve. Among the methods to solve the radiation problem are inherently rad-hard materials, radiation protection for these small microelectronic components, and natural radiation protection by burying radiation-sensitive components deep in the spacecraft or behind batteries or propellant tanks. These examples also show another great advantage to small, relatively short-lived spacecraft: We need the components to live for a much shorter period of time and, more importantly, we can take advantage of the rapid advance in technology that is going on all around us.
Use More Cubesat Technology
One of the places where microelectronics technology is being adopted for space use is in cubesats, originally invented in 1999 by Bob Twiggs at Stanford University and Jordi Puig-Suari at California Polytechnic State University. Always dramatically lower cost than traditional space systems, cubesats have become more sophisticated and more competent over time, and because they are flying relatively often, many more components are being qualified by on-orbit experience. Cubesat technology is advancing rapidly, at least coming close to keeping up with advances in modern microelectronics.
An example of this rapid advancement is our own experience on a government program that has been making use of cubesat solar arrays. In the two weeks between when we began preparing inputs for a design review and the time of the review, the price of the commercial cubesat solar arrays had gone down by 10 percent and the performance had gone up by 25 percent. This type of change is unlikely to occur in more traditional programs.
Another advantage of cubesat technology is that most of it is available off the shelf and can be delivered rapidly, such that these components never become part of the critical path. This reduces schedule, allows much more rapid system testing, and means that we don't have to buy expensive spares, because replacement units are available with the next FedEx delivery.
Make More Extensive Use of Software
One of the most important advances in spacecraft technology is to have the spacecraft do more of the functions in software and less in hardware. This has multiple advantages, such as:
· Lower mass.
· Lower recurring cost.
· Much higher functionality.
· Can be changed, upgraded and fixed on orbit.
It also has some disadvantages:
· High nonrecurring development cost.
· Difficulty managing the development process.
· Difficulty controlling subsystem interfaces that are all in the spacecraft computer.
The ability to fix the software on orbit is a key consideration for reducing cost and increasing reliability. This implies the need to ensure that mission operations have procedures and processes in place to change out the on-orbit software. Doing more in software also implies that there is a major advantage to being able to fly the latest computer available. In effect, the spacecraft becomes a general-purpose processor with most of the work being done in software. Because both software and on-board processors are evolving very rapidly, this reinforces the advantage of lower-cost, short-lived spacecraft. It is likely that you have much more processing capability in your smartphone than many traditional on-orbit spacecraft. This means that newer spacecraft will typically be more competent than older spacecraft, such that the value of an on-orbit asset continues to decline.
Some of the features that we can reasonably expect from future software-controlled spacecraft include:
· Software-defined radio.
· On-board preprocessing of images such that only the needed information is sent to the ground (which also reduces the needed communications bandwidth).
· More responsive systems, such that the spacecraft can send more detailed data if and when they are requested by the end user.
· Autonomous on-board control of both orbit and attitude such that the spacecraft always knows where it is and where it's looking.
· Precise control of spacecraft motion based on dynamic models such that all motions are both rapid and nearly jitter-free.
These features don't reduce cost directly, but rather allow low-cost small spacecraft to be much more capable, such that they can do the same job as older, larger, much more expensive systems.
Use Standardized or Commercial Components
In the past, standardization has been remarkably unsuccessful in space technology. This is largely because of the desire to optimize every component for each mission, i.e., "use the standard component, just delete these features we don't need and add these other features." However, the use of exceptionally capable processors may make standardization more acceptable in future missions.
One of the most important elements of standardization is the use of more plug-and-play electronics. Here the goal is to make an interface among the various spacecraft components and subsystems that will be essentially similar to the USB port on your computer in which multiple different items can be plugged in and begin to function immediately. This greatly reduces the time and cost associated with spacecraft integration and test. In addition, it allows the potential, for example, of a new more capable or more relevant payload to be put into a spacecraft that is in storage waiting for a need to be launched. We have become very used to this capability in our portable computers and cellphones, such that the very strong advantages are becoming increasingly clear.
Avoid Large Engines
We need very large rockets and rocket engines to get off the surface of the Earth, but once we are in space, they are no longer needed and often do far more harm than good. In the six-hour trip to geostationary orbit, it really doesn't matter whether our engine burns for 10 seconds or 10 minutes, but the engine that does the job in 10 seconds is a lot heavier, requires an entirely separate control system and typically has more fatal failure modes than very small engines. An example of this is the Clementine spacecraft that successfully orbited the Moon in 1994 and was next heading for rendezvous with an asteroid. The large engine intended to do this job was ignited and Clementine was never heard from again. Small engines may be able to overcome some potential failure modes by, for example, having more than a single engine, and the pointing may be able to be controlled by the existing spacecraft control system.
Use Hosted Payloads
A relatively new approach to reducing spacecraft cost is the use of hosted payloads, in which a secondary payload is added to another spacecraft, such as a commercial communications spacecraft. This is a good example of cooperation in which both sides can reduce cost. The hosted payload can obtain all of the spacecraft bus services at a fraction of the cost of building an entire spacecraft, and the host bus can reduce cost by generating income from selling bus space and services to the hosted payload. Although it wasn't called a hosted payload, this type of arrangement was used in the original GPS constellation in which the satellites also included a Nuclear Detection System payload. More recently, the U.S. Air Force's Commercially Hosted Infrared Payload was successfully launched on SES-2.
Particularly when combined with some of the systems engineering approaches we have previously discussed, spacecraft technology approaches can dramatically reduce mission cost and schedule and allow us to make use of much more modern, lower cost and far more capable technology.
Part 9 of 12
Reinventing Space: Dramatically Reducing Space Mission Cost — Government/Customer Approaches
This article discusses approaches that can be used by the government or other customers to reduce cost. Some of these involve direct action by the government, but many of them have to do with creating an environment that shows that the government genuinely wants low-cost, high-utility programs.
In this respect, the attitude of the government is most clearly seen in the programs that it chooses to fund or not fund, particularly when budgets are tight. So long as government actions demonstrate a preference for expensive programs (i.e., by funding large, expensive ones and killing off small, inexpensive ones to cover cost overruns or budget shortfalls), high cost will continue to be the norm.
Implement Processes To Reduce Cost
Throughout the other articles in this series, we have presented a great many ways to reduce cost, such as making cost data available, reducing the cost of failure and fostering an attitude of wanting and rewarding low cost. Many of these are broad and indirect. However, a number of approaches, such as trading on requirements, can be implemented on individual programs. In this case, the process is straightforward. At the beginning of the program, or at the start of any particular phase, ask the prime contractor to open the kickoff meeting by spending a half-day laying out the derivation of each of the principal system requirements and identifying those that are the major cost, performance, risk or schedule drivers for the current or proposed system design. This becomes the origin of a real, quantitative discussion on which requirements drive cost, performance, risk and schedule and which options could lead to a much lower-cost system. A second item in terms of direct program action is to provide funding continuity for a program, although this is more a matter of avoiding cost and schedule overruns rather than reducing cost per se.
Decentralize Procurement
Perhaps one of the more counterintuitive approaches that the government can use to reduce cost and schedule is to decentralize space system procurement. On a fairly regular basis, calls for government reform point out "waste and inefficiency" presumably created by having multiple organizations working on a problem. Thus there are regular calls for a "launch czar" or a "spacecraft czar" to reduce inefficiency by consolidating all of one activity under a single person or organization. In fact, this is likely to drive up cost, increase schedule and be counterproductive relative to what we would like to achieve.
We all recognize the value of competition in industry. With competition, multiple approaches are tested and we pick the ones that are best for our particular circumstances. This same idea works within the government. If one person is in charge of launch, we will quickly eliminate all secondary programs in the name of efficiency, concentrate all of the work in a few large contracts (probably with the major primes) and, of course, make reliability the most important feature since if we have fewer systems it is more important than ever that they work every time.
This is a prescription for further spinning up the space spiral that we have discussed. If instead of a single U.S. launch czar there are programs for small, responsive launch systems from the Army, Navy, Air Force, NASA and Missile Defense Agency (and perhaps even separate ones from NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center and Ames Research Center), then we have the roots of a competitive environment in which low cost and fast response become what it takes to make your program proceed. If we need a launch vehicle that can put 10,000 kilograms into low Earth orbit (LEO), we could start designing that from the outset or we could start with multiple agencies working on ideas for putting 500 kg into LEO, select the most promising three or four of those to work on 2,000 kg to LEO vehicles, and so on. This approach gets us multiple small launchers that provide competition to hold down cost, and develops and tests in-flight alternate technologies that can be used to drive down costs on larger vehicles. Rather like airplanes, ships or computers, it doesn't necessarily make sense to have one supplier working with one government agency to solve the diverse needs of the space community.
Sponsor and Support R&D To Reduce Cost
The government controls most of the research and development (R&D) spending in space technology. Unfortunately, there is a strong bias within the R&D community toward challenging new technology and away from practical systems capable of being implemented and able to reduce cost or schedule or both. It is likely that much more rapid advances in reducing cost and schedule would be possible if the government chose to sponsor more R&D oriented toward reducing cost without demanding that it advance technology at the same time. In many ways, this is less exciting, but it ultimately allows us to create many more programs that can advance both science and the needs of the warfighter in ways that we can only guess at today.
Related to sponsoring practical research to drive down cost is the problem of overreaching on R&D goals to the point where nothing practical is created. If we look for ways to reduce cost by a factor of two to 10, there are a great many approaches to choose from and real experience to show that it's possible. If we demand that we reduce cost by a factor of 100 or more, then it's likely that we will throw away the mission utility along with the cost, such that the end result doesn't really advance the needs of the warfighter or the scientist.
Revise SBIR Objectives
An example of the above problem is the U.S. Small Business Innovative Research (SBIR) program, an excellent vehicle for small companies, for which a major strength is finding innovative approaches to reducing cost or doing things more quickly. Microcosm undertook a survey of both Department of Defense and NASA space-related SBIR topics in 1996 for the book "Reducing Space Mission Cost" and found that only 4 percent of the topics were specifically oriented toward reducing cost. (Most of the topics were oriented toward creating new technology or improving existing software or technology.) We repeated the survey again in 2010 for the book "Space Mission Engineering: The New SMAD" and found a small change — only about 3 percent of the topics were associated directly with reducing cost. It would certainly make sense to identify the need for dramatically lower cost missions as a major objective for both NASA and the Pentagon and to orient a much larger fraction, say 30 percent or 40 percent, of innovative research toward this objective.
Make Use of SBIR Phase 3 Rules
Another SBIR approach is to make more extensive use of SBIR Phase 3s. By law, the SBIR Phase 3 meets all of the Competition in Contracting Act requirements, is strongly encouraged by Congress, and has been endorsed within the Department of Defense. This means that ideas developed under the SBIR program can go directly to being funded and built via a sole-source contract without another round of studies and competition, which can save more than a year and a large amount of money and time in the competition and contracting process. Unfortunately, this isn't a popular law within the government bureaucracy because it eliminates another round of competition and contracting, and therefore it is often ignored.
Create a Program Specifically To Reduce Cost
One of the most important proactive steps that the government can take to reduce cost is to assign the task of reducing cost to an individual or organization or create and fund a small program intended specifically to reduce cost and schedule. In both cases, this allows reducing cost and schedule to become a part of the official hierarchy of organizational objectives, to be reported on at meetings, to get some assigned budget and to allow a flow of regular status reviews up the management chain. All of this makes it clear that this is something the organization genuinely wants to accomplish and will be judged on how well it is being achieved. Similarly, the absence of such a program suggests that reducing cost and schedule has a priority well below other things that the organization needs to do. (The process for starting such a program was described in the first article in this series.)
Create an Environment that Fosters and Rewards Low Cost
Finally, perhaps the most important thing that the government can do is to create an environment that fosters and rewards low cost. Often, exactly the opposite occurs and any attempt to create a truly low-cost solution is regarded as unacceptable or looked at with suspicion or as an attempt to create a lower-quality product.
As we have discussed previously, there are a great many ways to show that low cost really is important. Certainly one of the best ways within the contractor community is to directly incentivize low cost. We now have 50 years of cost models that can tell us what a particular program should cost. If a company can come in at 20 percent below that cost, it would make sense to devote 10 percent to government savings and split the remaining 10 percent among the company, the management team and the technical team that accomplished the work. Of course, we also then have a new lower target for future cost-reduction missions.
One of the reasons that this is not done is the fear that the contractor will "cut corners" and create an inferior product. One of the easiest solutions to this problem is to work with the contractor in a positive way to identify and agree on the methods used to reduce cost. In this way, the government and the contractor become partners in reducing cost and both learn what approaches work and don't work in practice.
Ultimately the government or customer acting alone cannot dramatically reduce mission cost. But they do set the environment and establish what is valued most in terms of the end result. In the end, we may be forced to settle for a program that does everything we want but was 50 percent over budget and took twice as long. But that shouldn't be regarded as a good solution, because we haven't met the needs of the end user in a timely and efficient way. Dramatically reducing space mission cost and schedule must become a government priority in order for it to happen.
Part 10 of 12
Reinventing Space: Dramatically Reducing Space Mission Cost — Reducing Launch Cost
Central to the process of reducing mission cost is finding ways to dramatically reduce the cost of launch, particularly for small satellites. While launch is typically not the highest cost element of a space mission, it drives the other costs. So long as it costs on the order of $20,000 per kilogram to put stuff into orbit, the cost per kilogram of spacecraft will remain high. It is difficult to justify building spacecraft for "only" a few million dollars if the minimum cost for a dedicated launch to orbit is $30 million or more.
Alternatives to a Dedicated Launch to Orbit
The single most effective approach to reducing both cost and schedule is to not launch to orbit at all. Depending on the goals of the experiment, test or mission, there are multiple alternatives to a dedicated orbital launch.
Balloon flights can provide hours or days at high altitude at very low cost. If zero gravity is important, drop towers and drop tubes can provide excellent conditions for 5 to 10 seconds if you drop a payload of up to 1,000 kilograms inside a vacuum tube. (Drop towers for component testing are available at NASA Glenn Research Center in the United States and at the Center of Applied Space Technology and Microgravity, or ZARM, in Germany.) The data and payload are available essentially immediately and the experiment can typically be repeated twice per day.
Periods of zero gravity up to about 20 to 25 seconds (and even longer periods of lunar gravity or Mars gravity) are available from aircraft parabolic flights. Up to 40 parabolas a day can be flown, but perhaps the major benefit is that the experimenter and a few others can fly along, watch what happens and make adjustments and corrections in real time or over the course of several days. Originally flown only by NASA, parabolic flights are now commercially available from Zero G Corp. All of the above options are several orders of magnitude faster and lower cost than a dedicated launch to orbit.
The next step up from parabolic flights are suborbital flights on sounding rockets. These can provide up to 12 minutes of excellent zero gravity at an altitude of up to 1,200 kilometers. This means you can get to low Earth orbit (LEO) altitudes and above with vacuum and a full view of the Earth and space, just as you would in LEO. The only thing missing is the orbital velocity and a large chunk of the price tag.
For going all the way to obit at lower cost for small payloads, the principal options are rides as secondary payloads or shared launches. The ASAP (Ariane Structure for Auxiliary Payload) ring on the Ariane 5 provides accommodations for up to six payloads of 100 kilograms each and multiple slots can be used. The ASAP ring has been in use for many years and has provided a ride to orbit for many low-cost satellites. More recently, the ESPA (EELV Secondary Payload Adapter) ring has been developed to provide similar services for the Atlas and Delta vehicles. Sharing the launch on a variety of vehicles is also possible, but of course it requires coordination among the various payloads and where they want to go.
Depending on the specific mission needs, there are quite a few alternatives to a dedicated launch to orbit. Of course, each approach has both strengths and limitations, but all of them can provide potentially large reductions in both cost and schedule.
For larger spacecraft there are fewer options for reducing cost and schedule, although the use of some of the alternatives above for testing elements of the system may be able to find problems early in the program and therefore avoid more expensive fixes later.
Design for Multiple Launch Vehicles
Perhaps the best option for reducing both cost and schedule for a dedicated launch to orbit, or at least for helping to prevent overruns, is to design the spacecraft for multiple launch vehicles. The cost of launch is typically negotiated between whoever is buying the launch and the launch provider. Clearly, there is more potential for negotiation if more than one launch provider is possible. Designing for multiple launch vehicles is usually not hard or expensive because the payload environments of all of the launch vehicles are typically similar, except for the Minotaur, which provides up to 13 g's of axial acceleration because it is made from decommissioned ICBMs for which the loads were not a principal design consideration.
An equally important reason for designing for multiple launch vehicles is to protect the schedule. Recall that launch systems have approximately a 90 percent success rate. When a launch failure occurs, there is a significant downtime until the next launch of that system. In addition, if your payload was the next in line at the time of the failure, it may get moved further back by higher-priority launches when the launch system resumes operations. For this reason, nearly all of the constellation builders use multiple launch providers; this also provides a continuing negotiating position. Thus, if an organization needs to launch a constellation of 50 satellites, it may choose Launch Provider A for 15, Launch Provider B for 15 and then reserve the last 20, depending on the performance of the first set of launches. Note that constellations may also use launch vehicles of different sizes by launching multiple satellites on a larger launcher. This can work out well or badly. Iridium launched its entire constellation without a launch failure. Unfortunately, in 1998, Globalstar lost 12 satellites on a single Zenit-2 launch failure.
Develop a Small Dedicated Launch Vehicle
A key to reducing both cost and schedule for systems of all sizes is the development of a low-cost, small, responsive launch vehicle. This is needed for both operational smallsats and for rapid testing of both technology and processes applicable to larger systems. It also provides for the rapid introduction of new technology, which is evolving particularly quickly in small spacecraft. Generally, developing a small launcher for a particular satellite system is regarded as far too much risk and cost for space programs. However, for many small launcher concepts the nonrecurring development can be recovered in savings from one or two launches, making this an extremely attractive option if even a small constellation is needed. Several organizations are currently in the process of planning for or building small launchers, so it is possible that small launch will become a competitive market, which should drive costs down even further.
Build to Inventory with Launch on Demand
Building launch vehicles to inventory, as needed for launch on demand, can significantly reduce cost and schedule and increase utility by allowing spacecraft to be launched when they are ready, rather than when the launch vehicle is ready. Today, it is not uncommon for spacecraft to wait one, two or more years for a launch. This increases costs by leaving the spacecraft dollars sitting on a shelf, and also reduces the return on investment by not getting results as rapidly as would be desirable. And of course immediate launch in response to man-made or natural disasters or destruction of on-orbit assets (due to debris collisions or anti-satellite activities, for example) is effectively impossible without launch on demand. This is a capability that the Russians and former Soviet Union have had for over 30 years. During the 73-day Falklands War in 1982, the Soviets launched 29 payloads into orbit, most in direct response to the war. Launch on demand also prevents us from having to cover all of the world, all of the time, with all possible sensors needed to collect the data we need.
For small launchers, that cost less than $5 million, build to inventory and launch on demand are not particularly expensive and are primarily an issue of whether it is worth the interest cost on the money required to build the vehicle for the time period from when it is completed until it is launched. Thus, at 10 percent interest, holding the vehicle in inventory for six months would increase the build cost by only 5 percent and the total launch cost by less than that, say 4 percent, plus an incremental cost for storage and maintenance. In this case, a relatively small investment could lead to very large cost savings for space missions as a whole.
Design of Low-cost Launch Vehicles
The design and development of launch systems is beyond the scope of this summary. However, John London's 1994 book "LEO on the Cheap: Methods for Achieving Drastic Reductions in Space Launch Cost" is available for free online and, even though somewhat outdated, provides an excellent overview of why launch systems cost as much as they do and ways to reduce launch system cost. A number of summary papers are available on the Reinventing Space website, including a cost model that is intended to compare reusable vs. expendable launch vehicles, which has been updated to model the added cost of launch on demand systems.
Part 11 of 12
Dramatically Reducing Space Mission Cost — Ground Segment and Operations
Chronologically, mission operations represents the end of the mission life cycle, but it is also what the mission is all about — generating or communicating data and information that are intended to make it all worthwhile for the end user and whoever devoted a very considerable amount of money and time to create the space system and put it in orbit or at its intended destination. It is mission operations that brings down the data that support the warfighter, the scientist or the commercial user, that makes sure the spacecraft remains healthy throughout the mission life, and that disposes of the spacecraft at end of life so as to ensure that it doesn't harm people or the environment or contaminate other worlds. Although operations is critically important, we want to do this job as economically as possible, consistent with achieving a high level of mission utility.
Use Single Shift Operations
Traditionally, mission operations has been an expensive and complex activity run from a mission operations center requiring multiple people and 24-hour coverage, seven days a week. This, in turn, implies either four or five operations teams and the management and communications needed to make them work smoothly together. The most direct approach to reducing operations costs is to reduce the operations crew to a single shift of 40 hours a week. This reduces the number of people, overhead, management and communications costs. It also requires that the spacecraft be capable of "taking care of itself" for an extended period, including probably long weekends and holidays. Ordinarily this is much easier with small spacecraft that have large design margins and are capable of at least maintaining themselves in nearly any orientation. Historically, many small spacecraft have been operated by one person on a very part-time basis. Much of the process of reducing operations cost is ensuring the spacecraft doesn't need continuous care and feeding and can call for help whenever it needs it. The level and sophistication of automation, both on the spacecraft and on the ground, have increased dramatically in recent years. As a result, the potential for leaving the spacecraft alone for extended periods has become much easier, much more economical and much lower risk.
Use Service-provided Operations
Another approach for reducing operations cost is the use of service-provided ground stations. Here we are making use of existing ground stations located around the world that are both manned and maintained in order to communicate with multiple spacecraft. This also provides a high level of redundancy and excess coverage. The main disadvantage is that you have to share priority with others. However, this can be overcome by complementing the service-provided system with dedicated remote antennas built specifically for your system. When used in conjunction with a service-provided system, these remote sites are not required to have near-100 percent reliability, because the other ground stations provide backup and coverage in areas beyond the reach of one or a few dedicated remote antennas. Generally, the cost of the service-provided system is in the range of several hundred dollars per data pass, which is usually a great deal less than maintaining a dedicated ground system. Looking at the dedicated ground station from a cost perspective, we have to account for not only the cost of staffing and maintenance but also amortization of the cost of creating it in the first place.
Fly the Spacecraft over the Internet
In conjunction with service-provided systems, there is the potential for simply flying the spacecraft over the Internet. This is done by using the service-provided system for communications between the satellite and the ground. The ground station then puts the data on the Internet, from which they are then downloaded by as many end users as need them. (A variety of encryption techniques are available that keep the data secure, if needed.) Commands are sent to the spacecraft via the same process and, again, can be encrypted to avoid others intentionally or inadvertently taking over the spacecraft. In this way, the spacecraft becomes effectively just another node on the Internet that you can talk to, get data from, and control from any location where Internet access is available.
Use the Internet for Data Delivery
Similar to the process above, the Internet is nearly an ideal mechanism for delivering data nearly instantaneously to multiple end users in one location or scattered over the entire world. Because Internet use has become nearly universal, this also means that essentially all of the end users will understand the data communication process or can be quickly brought up to speed. Similarly, data archiving becomes simply a matter of creating the process for backing up the computer data with whatever regularity and safety is needed.
Use Autonomous On-board Orbit Control
One of the more cumbersome and critical ground station functions is maintaining the spacecraft orbit, particularly in low-altitude orbits where atmospheric drag is high. This can be accommodated by using a GPS receiver for navigation and autonomous on-board orbit control. One of the major problems faced by the original Iridium constellation of 66 satellites plus six spares, and one of the major drivers of early Iridium operations cost, was the need to do orbit determination several times per day on each of the satellites and, based on the results, do orbit station-keeping maneuvers commanded from the ground. This process and the associated costs go away entirely when the process is done autonomously onboard the spacecraft, in the same fashion that attitude control has normally been done autonomously onboard since the beginning of the space program. A secondary advantage of this approach is that you will know in advance (years in advance, if desired) just where your spacecraft is located at any given time in the future to about 1 kilometer in-track and even more precisely in cross-track and radial. This means that open-loop pointing of ground antennas will be reasonable for almost all applications and communications links.
Use AMSAT for Ground Communications
Finally, another approach is to use amateur radio satellite organization (AMSAT) resources for science data return. This approach of making use of the amateur community has worked in astronomy for more than a century as amateur astronomers make most of the observations of variable stars for which it is simply too expensive to tie up the manpower and resources of professional astronomers. (The American Association of Variable Star Observers has been in continuous and very successful operation since 1911.) This not only would provide data return at much lower cost, it also would create a high level of interest in multiple communities where amateurs were collecting useful science data and genuinely helping in the exploration of space.
Part 12 of 12
Mission Engineering
Space mission engineering is the definition of mission parameters and refinement of requirements so as to meet the broad, often poorly defined, objectives of a space mission in a timely manner at minimum cost and risk.
Reducing mission cost and schedule has always been important. However, because of the high cost of spacecraft and launch systems, the primary emphasis has traditionally been on minimizing mass and optimizing the design. These issues are still important today, but other factors have changed substantially. Dramatic advances in computers and microelectronics have transformed what can be done in a small, low-cost package. Lightweight composite structures have transformed how we build things.
Unfortunately, U.S. budgetary concerns and the "space spiral" of ever-increasing cost, demand for higher reliability, fewer missions and more increased cost have created a space program that we can no longer afford. There are more things that we need to do or would like to do in space than there is money available to do them. At the same time, the rest of the world, including our adversaries, is becoming much more competent in what they can do in space.
Fortunately, there is ample evidence in both existing and proposed programs that making dramatic reductions in cost and schedule is possible, while maintaining high reliability and low risk. In addition, low-cost satellites have ever-increasing mission utility — but it is exceptionally difficult to change the process that we have created over 50 years of space exploration.
What we need to do is reinvent space mission engineering — that is, to find a new process that lets us dramatically reduce mission cost and schedule while maintaining a high level of mission utility and reliability. In addition, we need to expand the process to include such elements as personnel, attitude and cost-sharing approaches that are important to dramatically reducing cost and risk but aren't usually thought of as "engineering."
Certainly, there is some level of implementation risk in changing the rules of how we do business in space. We might not be able to achieve all that we would like. But it should be clear that there is a far greater risk in not changing. In the words of Pete Rustan, a former senior manager and technical innovator at the U.S. National Reconnaissance Office: "If we do not transform, we will cease to be a leader as a spacefaring nation."
This "Reinventing Space" series began in the Feb. 4 issue of SpaceNews ["Reinventing Space: Dramatically Reducing Space Mission Cost," Commentary, page 19]. Ten subsequent pieces have appeared online at SpaceNews.com. This 12th and final article summarizes the new mission engineering process for creating dramatically lower cost and more rapid and responsive missions while maintaining a high level of mission utility.
Small is Beautiful, But Not the Only Answer
Although it is not always true, smaller spacecraft generally cost less, often a great deal less. Of course there are some things that physics doesn't let us do with small satellites. Resolution (for observations) and power-aperture (for communications) are both proportional to size. However, flying low can be an excellent substitute for large aperture and has the secondary benefit of essentially mitigating the orbital debris problem, for that particular mission and future missions, by flying spacecraft in a regime where orbital debris quickly re-enters and burns up. In addition, there are a very large number of cost reduction techniques — such as those associated with attitude, personnel, system engineering, mission design and government/customer approaches — that are applicable to missions of all sizes. Bluntly put, arguing that a particular mission requires a really big, expensive spacecraft is an excuse for not starting a cost reduction program, but not a very good one.
Dramatically Lower Cost Also Means Lower Risk
Disaggregation is the process of replacing a large, multifunction satellite with multiple smaller, simpler, much lower cost and probably shorter lived satellites. In purely economic terms, $2 billion spent over the next 15 years is much lower cost than $2 billion spent today to achieve the same objective. It is also much lower risk. If we lose one or two satellites out of a 10- or 15-satellite constellation, there is some performance or coverage degradation and an increase in the total cost to get the job done. If we lose the only satellite doing a particular task, then that capability is gone for the foreseeable future — certainly for several years. We have not yet invented indestructible planes, trains, cars, computers or cellphones. It is unlikely that we will invent indestructible or 100 percent reliable spacecraft or launch systems in the immediate future. Distributed, disaggregated assets significantly reduce risk, and a NASA Goddard Space Flight Center small satellite study has shown that the reliability of smallsats is essentially comparable to that of larger, more traditional satellites.
Most Everything Has Potential Consequences, Positive and Negative
We originally aggregated functions into single large satellites in order to have payloads work together, reduce the "overhead" of spacecraft bus functions, and therefore reduce cost and risk. Now we are proposing to go in the other direction for the same reasons. If there were any approach that had only good consequences (e.g., "Don't build your spacecraft out of cast iron"), it is highly likely that we're already doing it. There are two main results of this: (1) There is no substitute for good mission and system engineering in which we look at the problem as a whole, and (2) we need to find the right balance between extremes, and that balance may shift over time.
There is No Single, Simple Answer
These articles have suggested many approaches to reducing cost; however, contractors and customers alike must always be on the lookout for new approaches that will work within their culture. They must also be willing to challenge that culture when cost-saving practices are possible but go against the "known" practices. Program managers and system engineers are exceptionally good at what they do. Most of the simple solutions have been found and implemented. Driving down cost dramatically is going to take a combination of approaches that work together to get a high level of mission utility at dramatically lower cost.
It Takes Hard Work and Real |Engineering
The implication of the two items above is that it takes hard work and real engineering to get to where we want to go. This, in turn, implies spending money and starting programs — both on low-cost research and development and on low-cost missions and programs to achieve specific goals. We can't simply tell a program manager to go forth and build the next generation spacecraft for half of what the last generation cost, and don't change how you do anything or spend any R&D to get there. We need senior leaders to support making real and substantive changes and to back that up by providing the resources needed to do them. While we can expect to save money in the near term and save lots of money in the longer term, very few things are free, and reducing cost has a price.
We Need to Reverse the Space Spiral
High cost means a demand for lower risk and higher reliability, which, especially when coupled with lower U.S. budgets, means fewer missions, which means much higher cost, no innovation, and losing our advantage as the world's leader in space. Where we want to be is a world with more, much lower cost missions, which creates inherently lower risk and less demand for perfection (which we can't get anyway). This leads to greater innovation and more introduction of new technology, which both improves performance and further reduces cost, which in turn allows more missions to be flown even in the face of budget challenges and, most likely, some cost overruns. (We can change the way the world works, but we can't perform magic.)
It Can Be Done
It is clear that the dramatically reducing cost can be done and that low-cost missions will have ever-increasing utility. Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd. has been doing this for over a quarter-century, with most recent examples being the Disaster Monitoring Constellation and the recently launched Surrey Training Research and Nanosatellite Demonstration spacecraft. Sierra Nevada Corp. is building the next generation of Orbcomm satellites at a very low cost. Microcosm has proposed the NanoEye spacecraft with very high utility at very low cost. There will be many more examples as the pressure to reduce cost continues. The key point is that this is a workable problem that can be solved. It isn't easy, but it can be done.
The Results Can Transform the Future of Space
The net result of reinventing space, and reinventing space mission engineering in order to get there, can be truly transformational for the space program. Think of the potential of a space program that is much closer to what is now occurring with unmanned aerial vehicles or automobiles or cellphones. This is a world where there are continuously both new capabilities and new applications, where we are continuously startled by the new things that can be done from space and in space to support the warfighter, the scientist and the user in the street. For example, it may be that the GPS receiver in your phone not only knows where you are but at the push of 9-1-1 can tell someone else your exact location (even if you're in the middle of the ocean), what the problem is, and show a photo or clip of what is going on. There is a real potential to see a rapid and dramatic evolution in space systems' cost and capability.
The current economic problems have the potential to dramatically curtail space exploration and exploitation or lead to a new era of more robust, capable and lower-cost systems. The choice is ours. We will make that choice by either proceeding with business as usual or reinventing how we do business in space.
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