The Swirl

First, I invite you to read Jeff Foust's latest piece on the Augustine Human Space Flight panel. Go ahead, I'll wait...

Now I'll throw my own shrimp on the barbie--gingerly, of course. I've got a stake in this business in the form of a day job. There's been enough attention paid to this matter that one can't help admire the tempest in a teapot. The contenders for leading America's next generation of space exploration include:

• The Constellation Program as currently built: the Ares I crew launch vehicle for sending human beings in the Orion crew exploration vehicle into orbit, and the Ares V cargo launch vehicle, which can place the Altair lunar lander into orbit, along with an Earth departure stage (EDS). Missions to the International Space Station would require only Ares I and Orion. In a lunar exploration scenario, Ares V would launch Altair and the EDS into orbit. Next, Ares I launches Orion into orbit; Orion docks with Altair, and then the EDS fires its engine to send Orion and Altair toward the Moon.
• United Launch Alliance, a joint venture between Boeing and Lockheed-Martin, has suggested replacing Ares I with the "heavy" version of the Delta IV evolved expendable launch vehicle, which is already in existence, but doesn't have all the extra bells and whistles to make it "human rated."
• A group of NASA and non-NASA people have proposed a Space Shuttle-based archiecture called DIRECT, which would maximize existing equipment by putting four Space Shuttle Main Engines on the bottom of an external tank, and then putting the Orion on top. A new upper stage would give the Orion enough oomph to get it into orbit for lunar missions. For lunar missions, two DIRECT vehicles would be used, with one launching Altair, one launching Orion and the Earth departure stage (I believe).
• Others have suggested using wholly commercial launchers and spacecraft to support the International Space Station via the Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) program. The most likely candidate, if proven successful, would be SpaceX's Falcon 9 launcher and six-person Dragon spacecraft.

And no doubt there are others. An impressive array of choices--more than America had ten years ago, at any rate--but how does one decide? I myself am a proud, self-proclaimed "English major" (M.A. University of Central Florida '02, lest you think my low-key pose is real). I'm not an engineer, I'm a policy guy.

It seems to me that the bigger picture is being lost in the swirl over the choice of rockets. Everyone's so concerned about the "horse race" between the various vehicles that they're overlooking where the horses might or should be going, which is really the most important part of this discussion. I love our space science programs--the rovers, the orbiters, the telescopes--but I would dearly love to see human beings (yes, Americans) plant Old Glory into an asteroid or Mars or the Moon again. We did it when I was born, f'r gosh sakes, certainly we can improve on that performance after 40 years!

But the bigger questions aren't just about flags and footprints. We had that, won a race, and then closed down the production lines for the Moon rockets because we thought the job was done. As a space advocate, beg to differ. We've learned more about the Moon in the past 40 years. We know that the place is rich in energy, actual (solar) and potential (helium-3, which can be used for fusion). It might have water ice, which would make long-term bases and settlements possible up there. That's what the LCROSS mission will hopefully find out in October.

But what are we going to do when we're up there? That's where the conversation has always fallen flat (one can see the results in the International Space Station). Here's a step-by-step progression of what's possible with current technology--whichever rockets we choose to build:

1. Science performed by robotic vehicles, including Earth observation, planetary science, and astronomy.
2. Robotic "virtual" entertainment (e.g. tele-operated rovers moving around the Moon under the control of private citizens back on Earth).
3. Human exploration of other worlds, including the Moon, asteroids, and Mars.
4. Space resource development, including investigating space solar power, helium-3, platinum-group metals, and anything we haven't seen yet for use in solving problems here on Earth.
5. Basic science taking advantage of the near-vacuum and low gravity of the Moon or other bodies in the solar system.
6. Manufacturing of new products taking advantage of the space environment.
7. Handling or storage of materials too dangerous or precious to leave on Earth, such as nuclear waste, biotechnology, nanotechnology, cultural artifacts, or genetic "libraries" of all life on Earth.
8. Space commerce, including space hotels, tourism, off-world banks, and space salvage--none of which require a permanent human presence in space to maintain.
9. Space settlement, meaning permanent human habitations in orbit or on the Moon, Mars, or asteroids for scientific, commercial, or cultural reasons.

If I were President, I'd want to learn from the panel where the country should go and what we should do in space. From there, the hardware selections become more or less academic. If I had my choice, I'd keep shooting for the Moon, Mars, and beyond--let NASA keep doing what it's doing. I don't have a problem with a "mixed fleet" to low Earth orbit and the Space Station until the commercial sector gets established. Redundant capability to LEO might not be efficient, but it gives the country several options. But we need to keep NASA focused on the frontiers of science and engineering. Otherwise, what's the darned point?

Self-Indulgence, Aimlessness, and Putting Things in Perspective

So today one of my Gen Y buddies posted an article on a new phenomenon: the "quarter-life crisis." This new, self-induced crisis is neatly summarized early in the article:

This phenomenon, known as the “Quarterlife Crisis,” is as ubiquitous as it is intangible. Unrelenting indecision, isolation, confusion and anxiety about working, relationships and direction is reported by people in their mid-twenties to early thirties who are usually urban, middle class and well-educated; those who should be able to capitalize on their youth, unparalleled freedom and free-for-all individuation. They can’t make any decisions, because they don’t know what they want, and they don’t know what they want because they don’t know who they are, and they don’t know who they are because they’re allowed to be anyone they want.

The Bartish shorthand for this might be called the "What am I going to be when I grow up?" crisis. Or simply ennui brought on by lack of bounds or direction (see Barry Schwartz's The Paradox of Choice for an extended treatment of this problem). I probably had something like this in my mid-20s, but I very quickly got sick of my own whining with asking, "Why me?" and asked, "Okay, what do I want out of life?" My rather naive answer was, "I want to go into space." Trajectory set. Date: October 31, 2004. Everything else after that was a quest to figure out what I needed to do to get there.

Now other people might come up with different answers to the question I asked myself or ask themselves different questions entirely. After spending a lot of my teens and twenties as an intellectual, it was somewhat unique for me to think about applying practical considerations to the wild ideas roaming around my head. But I think it's safe to say that from that point on, I started applying what Ayn Rand would call reasoning, my mother would call "common sense," and I ended up calling "wisdom." Once I had a goal in mind, the rest was just details, and I went forth and lived my life.

But I have a lot of friends--not just Gen Yers--who still don't have an answer to "What do I want?" Other people might be more driven by family, or more Earth-based aspirations. Bully for them. If you've got a dream, chase it. If you can't pursue it right now, take a job that supports you while pursuing what you really want in your free time. Of course, as my buddy Martin put it, "Sometimes a job is just a job." Maybe. My time at Disney's Dixie Landing Resort front desk qualifies. Hated the job, did it to pay the bills, spent my free time with my friends, reading, writing, traveling, and drinking. I took what joy from my life as I could, and I lived low-rent. And I had a great time in Orlando. I still have great friends from that time.

Of course even I'm not immune to moments of self-involved boredom. Excellent example today: I could sense myself getting p!$$y with a couple of coworkers about an absolute non-issue in even the work scheme of things, and yet I was prepared to make myself a permanent annoyance to my boss over it. If I tell you it's over an issue of grammar, that will show how shallow and terrifying the concerns of my life are right now.

And then I remembered an 8-year-old kid Darlene the Science Cheerleader knows. This girl is by all accounts a sweet kid, winning smile, the whole nine yards of what you'd like a kid to be. Well, last week Dar informed me that this little girl is going in for serious chemotherapy, radiation, and bone marrow work to cope with leukemia. She's already got a head like a ping pong ball, but her smile lights up the room. They've been treating her like a queen this past weekend--whale watching, tea party, ice cream party, whatever the hell she wants. Today was the day she was supposed to go in for the full-court medical press, and I suddenly remembered that as I caught myself being a self-involved nincompoop.

So when I read/hear about twentysomethings who don't know what they want to do with their empty little heads/lives, I think of the stuff I have left to do with my life, and then I try to think of kids like this little girl and shut up. If I have too much time to worry about my own little problems, I need to take a page from my e-buddy Laura and just do something for someone else.

Or, as the article puts it, "In other words: it might just be time to grow the f@#$ up."

Leadership in the Public and Private Sectors

One of the advantages of living and working in Huntsville, AL, is getting to meet or hear some of the bright bulbs in the space business. I've had the pleasure of meeting and listening to Rex Geveden, President of Teledyne Brown Engineering (TBE), and former Deputy Director of Marshall Space Flight Center and Associate Administrator of NASA. Today he was speaking at the Marshall Association's monthly luncheon, this time located at the Redstone Arsenal Officer's Club. Geveden's talk for today was about the functional, strategic, and performance differences and similiarities between leadership in the public and private sector. I found the comments most insightful, and a good reflection of life in the space business specifically.

Functional Differences
Geveden started by explaining the emphases of each type of leader. Government leaders, in his view, are concerned with maximizing/optimizing "mission value," that is, getting the most bang for your programmatic buck. A private-sector leader is more concerned (not surprisingly) with maximizing profit for the company or its shareholders. As he put it, "the business is about the business," sort of like Calvin Coolidge's comment that "the business of America is business."

Geveden recommended that government avoid "Total System Performance" or "Lead System Integrator (LSI)" contracts, where an outside entity/company is responsible for the overall performance of a program/project. His reasoning is simply that business leaders don't have the same interests or goals as the government (see above), and that those interests are incompatible. Also, if government turns over an entire program over to an external contractor (examples: Space Shuttle, Space Station), then the government agency overseeing things is adding little to no value and might as well just get out of the way. Geveden was even more specific: "That model does and will always fail."

By contrast, Geveden offered up the Ares Project as a good model for program management, as it allows the government to take responsibility for the final result, which offers a good compromise between government oversight and its needs (maximizing mission output) and private sector needs (performance and profit).

One of the advantages the private sector has is that the decision cycle time is shorter simply because the motivations are simpler (profits). One of the big challenges for government, Geveden acknowledged, is that it has to answer to multiple constituencies, so that every action and decision feels like an unsatisfactory compromise.

Strategic Planning
Government agencies have a specific burden that private-sector operations do not: they do not control the allocation of their resources. Any strategic plan becomes more like a "wish list," more often controlled by the President or Congress. "This is a brilliant model for government," Geveden said, "not strategic planning."

In the private sector, resources must be allocated in accordance with the strategic plan in order to ensure accurate/relevant measurement of performance. There are three ways companies can choose to focus their resources: economies of scale (e.g. Wal-Mart), product/service focus (e.g. FedEx), or product differentiation, as TBE is doing.

Performance
In the public sector, civil servants' performance is "nebulous," as Geveden put it, and "hard to measure." The private sector's performance can be measured easily, he joked: "Here's your check." In other words, all performance is tied to the bottom line.

Geveden closed by comparing the culture of NASA with the Russian space program. He believed that there was a common idealism and belief in the value of space exploration. That sense of community is not shared everywhere. For instance, Geveden did not believe that the idealism of space exploration held inside the Beltway, "where people scarcely know that Goddard Space Flight Center is nearby and that the International Space Station is still in orbit." Huntsville, he noted, "loves space," as it's part of what has made the town what it is.

Moving to the Q&A, the most important question Geveden answered, in my opinion, was, "What does NASA need to do to get the resources it needs to do its job?" I liked his answer, mostly because it's similar to my own view: "NASA needs to chose to do the very hard things. They need to look a little more toward relevance." The specific example he cited was energy independence and space solar power, suggesting that NASA should do a full-scale test mission of some kind.

I think Geveden's remarks deserve consideration, given his experience on both sides of the fence (public and private sector). If we are going to have a fully functional "space economy" in the future, we need to make sure that government is doing the sorts of things that best reflect its expertise and motivations, while the private sector should do things that will produce the best results through their profit motives. In my view, that means leaving "exploration" to government and "operations" to the private sector. We shall see what the future brings.