STS-114

[Ankf00]

is going up in July... the debris analysis is complete, later on I shall relate a humorous tale to those many engineers and technical people who know prob/stats and/or OR stuff, and those who don't too, it'll just be more amusing if you had to sit there while someone explained to you std deviations and p distributions while in a stuffy lecture hall ;) ... :)
I'll put it this way, the new admin, Michael Griffin, is a badass, and the Boeing and USA engineers down there are di*****s. One pwn3ed the other :gomer:

[Robstar]

std deviations

Mate, you gotta be careful when partying so much... :D

[Gnam]

This story (http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20050628/ap_on_sc/space_shuttle_9) doesn't seem as sure Ank.


Despite exhaustive work and considerable progress over the past 2 1/2 years, NASA has been unable to eliminate the possibility of dangerous pieces of foam and ice from breaking off the external fuel tank and striking the shuttle at liftoff, the return-to-flight task force said.

In addition, NASA still does not have a clear idea of all the potential threats from ice, and still lacks a practical way to fix holes and other damage caused by flyaway launch debris, the group said.

It was not immediately clear if NASA would delay its planned July shuttle launch in light of the task force's assessment.
Although, Griffin doesn't seem worried.


Griffin has insisted for weeks that he and his top managers will have the final say on when and whether it's safe to resume shuttle launches, regardless of what advisory groups like the task force have to say.

My guess is the commission is in CYA mode. They are covered in the event of an accident because they said it wasn't ready. But, if everything goes smoothly they can say they were just being "safe". I still can't believe all this hassle is due to foam. :shakehead

[JT265]

Mate, you gotta be careful when partying so much... :D

You got that right. I ain't listening to that lecture.


AGAIN!!!! :cry:



















:D

[JohnHKart]

Tonight on Natl Geo at 8PM there's a Seconds from Disaster about Columbia. I think it's a new show as I haven't seen this one listed before.

John

[Ankf00]

Despite exhaustive work and considerable progress over the past 2 1/2 years, NASA has been unable to eliminate the possibility of dangerous pieces of foam and ice from breaking off the external fuel tank and striking the shuttle at liftoff, the return-to-flight task force said.

In addition, NASA still does not have a clear idea of all the potential threats from ice, and still lacks a practical way to fix holes and other damage caused by flyaway launch debris, the group said.

It was not immediately clear if NASA would delay its planned July shuttle launch in light of the task force's assessment.

the foam risk is almost nil at this point, they've redone all their manufacturing/assembly processes at the Michoud, LA plant, redone as in REDONE. the foam that downed Columbia came off of the strut that goes to the shuttle as a support for the fuel line, it's applied towards the end of the process and anyone could apply any part of any foam as long as they were "certified." From now on 2 guys apply the goo and the foam and it's supervised at all times, and you must be certified for the very exact portion of the external tank you're going to be applying the foam to, the complex operations like the strut are supervised by 2 people with an entire team of folks affixing the foam. On top of that they video tape everything and go back and analyze their procedures to make sure it's on the up and up.

today Griffin gave the go-ahead for the launch, and of course it'll come down to the managers, but the hold up to this point was the until very recently non-existent ice analysis...

so to get to the greatest story ever....

Columbia goes down, everyone cries, friends lose their fathers, friends lose their friends, life is s***** for everyone for a while. The cause? Broken safety culture... so what happens, an investigation board says "change your safety culture!" (We'll ignore that it's Boeing's fault that their old analysts w/ the decades of real experience in SoCal whom they left behind (Huntington Beach I think) knew the problem was catastrophic and the n00bs they hired in their new Houston operation had no clue)

so from now on "this is the way it's always been" isn't going to cut it, hell, even at my work we have posters here and there saying just as much. things are going to be different, everything's going to be scrutinized, no one wants to lose their friends like that again... so we have 2 years of Return to Flight operations, and everything's moving at a hectic pace, new technologies are being invented for inspection, analysis, and repair, and every process is pretty much redone, tile repair tools are being invented left and right, and I think 5 different repair systems are going to fly on 114 (which will be a test flight just like STS-1 through STS-5). The foam problem's solved, heck, they have people CREATING new kinds of low density ice they can shoot through a hypervelocity cannon to test ice-damage on tile and Reinforced Carbon Carbon panels that make up the leading edge of the wings...

so what do the Boeing analysts, USA middle-men, and NASA mgrs do this entire spring once the foam problem is solved? they sit on their asses, the debris analysis isn't complete b/c ice hasnt' been analyzed yet, well it has, a conservative model is showing about 1/90 chance at that time, no one wants to let it out because it looks bad, very bad.

here comes the new NASA admin, Michael Griffin, real commercial world experience, one of the old NASA guys of the Reagan generation that were supposedly groomed to take over the agency and lead it to new heights until they were all kicked aside in the 90's to make room for bean counters and non-technical douchebags like the last admin O'Keefe... here comes Griffin with more graduate/doctorate degrees than you can count on one hand, a former NASA "Chief Engineer."

Design Verification Review, 100+ ppl, Boeing, USA, NASA, Griffin, so the subject of why the f*** debris isn't complete comes up, and this invariably leads to "ice."

the room's explanation: "well ice has never killed us before" (big change in the culture huh?) keep in mind the room is almost all of the old guard who are used to screaming at the young guys "THIS IS THE WAY I'VE BEEN DOING IT FOR THIRTY-FIVE YEARS" when the subject of "why? that makes no sense and it's actually worse" comes up...

"well Ice has never killed us before" after all the problems of STS-107 they actually have the balls to say that to Griffin's face

so Griffin walks up to the whiteboard and draws a bell curve... he lops off both ends... he begins class, "Probability & Statistics 303L"... he shows them what a distribution is, what it means, what it's for, goes through the whole freaking lecture with them, a buncha geezers with masters and doctorates are getting told off by the new admin whose barely been on the job for a few months about distributions and std deviations :D

"until you can show me that there is less than 1/200 chance of ice creating catastrophic failure, get back to work"

yes, it's geek humor, if you dont' like it or fail to appreciate the irony of it you can sue me, you knew what you were getting into when you chose to read one of my threads :p

so after they wasted the past few months, they finally do the ice analysis and it's <1/200 w/ conservatism, which is hilarious b/c they wasted months and finished it up w/in a month once they were told off. the problem with the ice is it's never consistent, shapes, densities, consistencies, always changing, so they've got this heater around the fuel line now that's supposed to cut it down, and the 1/90 number was a VERY conservative number, safety factors times safety factors time ssafety factors essentially...

lesson: you can teach old geezers new tricks!

[Ankf00]

This is how Griffin feels about commercialization, and I agree completely, you can't just throw money at new companies and go "ok, space is commercial now!!!!" and expect it to all work out, spaceship one was suborbital, it's system would be a complete failure in re-entry from orbit b/c of the speeds involved...

Michael Griffin's comments:
"The idea of putting more emphasis on commercial space comes from the
observation that we have a $10 trillion economy - the greatest that the
world has ever seen. We produce $2 trillion more each year in goods and
services than we can even consume ourselves. The ability of this economy
and the principles upon which it is established to generate wealth is an
amazement to the entire world. It largely draws on the ground rules of -
I want to say unfettered competition - but we actually 'fetter' the
competition in order to have rules of the road and to make it reasonably
fair and ethical.
The grounding principle of US economic growth has been competition. I
have spent considerable time out in Silicon Valley and I would say that
if you want to see the most competitive end of the spectrum that's the
place to go - its quite eye opening. I am not suggesting that everything
should be like that but I am suggesting that everyone understand it and
know it.
So the question is in the space business, and I think we can all admit
that that type of competition is largely lacking from today's aerospace
business. So, for me, as NASA Administrator, the problem is how do we
engage that engine of competition more productively so that it can work
on behalf of the space business?
I would have to say that for all of my admiration for entrepreneurs -
people who take risks and start businesses - 9 out of 10 of them fail.
They go on to start another business and fail again. 1 out of 10 of them
succeed. They build the business up, and then sell it out to a larger
business or take it public and become part of the American industrial
landscape.
For all of my admiration for that community - and I have been part of it
(I was one of the failures) I think I would have to say that we are
aware that there is a cacophony of voices out there from what we'll call
the 'non traditional space community' raising their hands saying "I can
do it. I can do it. If the government (read Air Force and NASA) would
just put some money out available for us - that was dedicated to us - we
could perform and you would see."
For the moment, however, based on actual product delivered, I have to
consider that mostly noise - with not much signal. Because real
competitive businesses develop their own business plan, find their own
money, they acquire a team, they produce a product, and they try to see
if it will sell. That is what real businesses do. They don't come to the
government saying "set aside some money for us - and trust us - and
watch us perform." That's not how it works. I guess some people try to
do that but it is not a notably successful approach. That is not [in
the] the sprit of American industrial and economic competition.
I am literally besieged by entrepreneurs who insist that if I just dump
the money into their area we'll get results. OK - maybe so. But I have
to deal with the fact that if I gamble money in that direction - and
product is not delivered - then public money has been spent on something
which didn't come true. [Moreover] it was money that could have been
spent on a higher odds proposition - and I have to account for why I did
that.
So, the task in front of me as a manager of our civil space program is
how to recognize and deal with the fact that publicly funded space
programs have goals and objectives which have to be achieved. The NASA
Administrator, the Director of the NRO, Secretary of he Air Force - all
the folks who have high level budgeting and strategic authority as to
where the money goes - have goals and objectives that have to be met.
And the meeting of those goals cannot be treated as a lottery - where
we'll just spread money around and let a thousand flowers bloom.
But at the same time we, as stewards of public money, have to recognize
that a way needs to be found to engage the engine of competition. One
measure of our success in allocating public dollars is using those
dollars to help create the kind of economy that made America great - and
it has largely been lacking in the aerospace industry.
So it is a real dilemma - it is a real dichotomy: how do we engage
competition and position ourselves to take advantage of the successes
and accept the failures which inevitable occur in that environment
while, at the same time, meeting the goals and objectives that we have
as managers?
What I've come to, after considerable thinking (with some discussion and
modifications to come) - for NASA: the best way to do that is to utilize
the market that is offered by the International Space Station and its
requirements to supply crew and cargo as the years unfold. For the next
few years, we are going to be completing the assembly of the space
station and supplying cargo to it using the space shuttle. That is in
accordance with the President' s policy directions initiated on January
14th 2004 in his major speech and following up with the space
transportation policy. So for the next few years that is what we are
going to be doing.
In the post-shuttle world (after 2010) we will have available the Crew
Exploration Vehicle (CEV) that will be the follow-on to the shuttle for
getting people in space. The CEV will have the requirement to carry
astronauts to the Moon, and later, to Mars, but it will also have the
requirement to carry astronauts to and from the space station. In our
architecture planning we are making certain that unmanned versions can
also carry cargo to the station.
So, there will - and there must - be a government-derived capability to
service the space station even after the shuttle is retired. But because
there must be such a capability does not imply to us that that is the
way we would most prefer - to have cargo and crew logistics requirements
for the station satisfied. What I would like to do is be able to buy
those services from industry - and in fact I'd like to be able to buy
those services from the industry represented in this group: the Space
Transportation Association.
Let me remind you that in other venues the government operates military
air. I have been on many military air flights. The government also buys
tickets on commercial airlines. So one approach does not exclude the
other. Today we don't have, in the space industry, the equivalent of the
airline tickets or the airline cargo delivery services. But, using the
NASA market for this traffic to the space station, I believe we can help
create one. And I believe that if we do it will lower the amount of
money we have to pay for such services - because I think we all know
that when we can engage the engine of competition, [using] American
industrial prowess, services will be provided in a far more efficient
fashion than when the government has to do it.
So, in keeping with these thoughts, what should we expect - and how am I
trying to balance the conflicting requirements between the appropriate
stewardship of public money and the desire to engage the engine of
competition? What should you expect over the next few months?
There is a line in our budget called "ISS Crew and Cargo". It is not
overly well-funded right now - a couple of hundred million dollars - or
something (I don't keep that number in my head). We plan to use that to
get us started on that process. I would expect to see - right from the
outset - a departure from the more traditional RFP leading to a prime
contract that we've all come to expect from NASA. You might expect to
see a BAA for example. You might expect to see other transactional
agreements - which NASA can do - as opposed to a classic prime
contractor. There was a Rand Corporation study a couple of years ago
citing the efficacy of other transactional agreements within the
government as a mechanism for accomplishing stewardship of public funds
(Its a very interesting report - one that I recommend to you).
[You can] expect to see the government looking to "make a deal" in a
commercial sense. Again, rather than issuing a prime contract focused on
process and on very detailed specifications on "how to do" things, [you
should] look for a deal-making arrangement where we tell you what it is
we want the requested services or good to be able to perform. For those
of you that have spent any time in the world of communication satellites
- look for that to be the model rather than the CEV procurement.
What are some characteristics of the deal that we might be willing to
make? Despite the wishes and entreaties of those who would like me to
dump $400-500 million on their enterprise (hopefully) - or on some
enterprise - and then just stand back and wait to see if the results
come in - that's not going to happen.
If you are familiar with true commercial space arrangements, both sides
have to have "skin" in the game. If I am a provider of a communications
satellite capability to a firm that really only wants to make money,
and, from their point of view, the satellite is just a transponder on a
tall telephone pole, there is a very healthy tension that operates. The
satellite owner has to pick a satellite provider. It doesn't have the
money to go out and pick two or three. It might have a leader-follower -
or be carrying a couple [of companies] along, but by in large has to
pick one in fairly short order and get on with it.
But, having picked a provider for a couple-of-hundred-million-dollar
procurement, even in commercial terms it is a little bit like the joke
about owing money to a bank i.e. if you owe $10,000 to a bank you've got
a problem; if you owe $10 million to a bank they have a problem. Once I
bet on you, if I am a commercial communications satellite procurer, I am
now stuck. So I need to make sure that both sides have skin in the game.

If you are providing a satellite on commercial terms you never go into
the black until that satellite is up, operating, and working - and maybe
working for some time. In financial terms you're always a little bit
"pink". I can't allow you to go "deep red" because you might go out of
business. And I won't get many offerers if I make you do the whole thing
on a vendor financing arrangement - the way I buy a car. I go down and
buy a car that someone has already put their own money into building.
That doesn't work in the satellite world because what vendor is going to
build a several hundred million dollar satellite built on spec? Not too
many - and the price will be very high because competition is limited.
So, there is a tension between buyer and seller. The buyer has to
provide milestone money and progress payment money depending on the
meeting and achieving of certain milestones in the development of the
bird (satellite) - but the seller never really makes money until the
final product is delivered and working well. We need arrangements like
that when we begin to develop this ISS crew and cargo procurement.
Another focus that we will be emphasizing is performance rather than
process. In the communications satellite world I am interested in
numbers of transponders, throughput of those transponders, projected
life time of those transponders on orbit, pointing control of the
satellite so that the antennas point in the right direction, numbers of
spot beams, power levels - a variety of things like that - all of which
can be characterized in performance terms. It is not up to me as the
procurer of that service to determine how the engineers working for you
provide that service. I do insist that you meet certain standards,
capable of qualifying for insurance, because, if I am a procurer, I wan
tot buy insurance on the spacecraft and the launch as part of the
overall business package.
So, just like when we build ships and airplanes, there are standards to
which such objects have to be designed and built - or they can't be
insured. The same thing is true in the true space arena. I would look
for us to supply a floor of standards to which you must work. For
example, if you are going to provide commercial crew services to us then
human rating crew requirements must be respected. They don't have to be
respected to every 'i' dotted and 't' crossed, and we are interested in
push back on what is value added and what is not value added, but to
ignore them is also not going to be acceptable.
Fundamentally, what we are going to be focusing on is what sort of
performance crew and cargo delivery systems would require as opposed to
what type of process they would have to follow.
[You should] look for us to conduct such a competitive procurement - and
[you should] look for us to pick a "leader" with whom we will get
started - and also to fund a couple of "followers" at the study level in
case the leader falls off the track. Because, the leader is only going
to continue to get his money if progress continues to be met. We will
set up verifiable milestones, agreed upon in the deal, the way that any
commercial deal would be done. When the terms and conditions are met,
the money will be provided.
[You should] look for us to conduct our contracting on a fixed price
basis. This is the way people buy things out in the world. I don't go
out and buy a car or an airplane or (pretty much) anything else on the
basis of "why don't you build me this car - and tell me how much it
costs when you are done." That's not the way we are going to do things.
In exchange for that [you should] look to be required to provide a
commitment to sell at a specified price if I provide a commitment to buy
- at a specified number. Those are the kinds of commercial terms that
people insist on. When you close a deal you usually have an option to
buy a certain number of units at a certain price. There won't be balloon
payments at the end and there won't be "get well" arrangements if you
screw up. On the other hand, there will be fairly substantial rewards
for people who can deliver.
Now when I say all of this - and I relate it to the one aspect of the
space business that is truly commercial - or to other aspects of our
economy with which we are all familiar - why is it that we call this
kind of procurement in the space business "non-traditional"? We go
around town and talk about setting aside money for 'non-traditional'
providers - that has been a feature of our Exploration Systems Mission
Directorate - one of which I heartily approve. When in fact, what I
would offer is that we in the space business - and in fact in the
government acquisition business in general - are the non-traditional
procurers. Even as big as government procurement is, it is still
(fortunately) only a fraction of the overall U.S. economy. The
government budget is $2.5 trillion, whereas the economy is $10 trillion.

So, the traditional providers are the ones who are working in the
fashion that I am describing - and that I want to bring to the space
business. The non-traditional providers are what we have been doing. Not
that it hasn't worked well and accomplished many good things on our
behalf. I still don't think we can buy an ICBM or a launch vehicle quite
yet from a "non-traditional provider", although I'd like to get there.
So, I think my feet are firmly grounded in reality. But I am also
grounded in the idea that we need to change some of the definition of
reality. Think, that if we think about it, the "traditional" providers
are the ones that we want to engage. So, over the next few months, look
for these kinds of trends for us. I am going to try to meet those
challenges - and I expect to do it with all of your help.
Thank you very much