NASA, which has come under fire recently for its management of scientist’s access to the media, has run more issues involving politics. According to the Houston Chronicle today,

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NASA’s FY 2007 budget proposes 17 space shuttle missions between now and September 30, 2010. That is 55 months, or about one shuttle flight every three months. I am thinking that the odds of flying 17 flights over that time period are vanishingly small. Success-oriented planning has its limits. I’d put the over/under at less than 10.

University of Maryland’s Bob Park, a generally reliable and always interesting commentator on science issues, falls well short of his usual standards in today’s New York Times in an op-ed on the termination of the NASA Triana satellite. Park chooses to go after cheap political points rather than engage the real substance of policy issues involving the convoluted and controversial history of Triana.

Park bemoans the termination of Triana and asks ominously, “Why did NASA kill a climate change project?”. He suggests a sinister conspiracy within the Bush Administration to “avoid the truth about global warming” and to transfer their “hated” of Al Gore onto the project he first proposed in 1998. Supposedly coming to Vice president Gore in dream, the original idea for Triana was based on putting a high definition TV camera far out in space where the satellite’s 24-7-365 view of the Earth would inspire people to be better stewards of our planet. In 1998 the Clinton White House issued a press release on Triana, which described the proposal as follows:

“Vice President Gore proposed today that NASA scientists and engineers design, build and operate a satellite that will make available a live image of earth 24 hours a day on the Internet … “This new satellite, called Triana, will allow people around the globe to gaze at our planet as it travels in its orbit around the sun for the first time in history,” Vice President Gore said. “With the next millennium just around the corner, developing this High Definition TV quality image of the full disk of the continuously lit Earth and making it available 24 hours a day on the Internet will awaken a new generation to the environment and educate millions of children around the globe. This new space craft will be carried into low earth orbit where a small motor will place it in orbit 1 million miles from earth at the L1 point (short for the Lagrangian libration point), the point between the earth and sun where gravitational attractions are balanced. The satellite will carry a small telescope and camera to provide these new compelling images … These images of the earth moved thousands of Americans and encouraged them to become active stakeholders in our planet’s wellbeing, Vice President Gore said.”

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The webcast and transcript of our visit with Ed David, science advisor to Richard Nixon from 1970-1973, are now available online. Dr. David related a story that I had never heard before about how the scheduling of the Apollo missions were affected because of political considerations related to the 1972 presidential election. In short, President Nixon was worried that an accident might hurt his reelection prospects. Here is how Dr. David described the events:

“Another interesting situation I found myself involved with was the Apollo program. When I arrived on the White House scene, two Apollo missions had already been canceled. They were Apollo 18 and 19. There were originally plans, as I remember, for 20 and 21, but 21 never really got off the drawing board. The possible cancellation of Apollo 16 and 17 was in the wind, it was talked around, even though those two missions were slated to provide important scientific information about the moon, and they were basically the payoff of all of the efforts that went into the Apollo program. Most of the man-hours on the moon came during those two missions. In fact, most of the scientific measuring equipment the astronauts placed on the moon at that time are still there and many of them are still operational. So there’s an awful lot of data coming in. Now, after examining this issue closely with the help of the President’s Science Advisory Committee, which was called PSAC in those days, and specifically the help of Professor Tommy Gold of Cornell, who some of you may know, I wrote a memo to the president saying, in effect, that the nation had bought everything for these trips except the fuel, and that we ought to go ahead in light of the potential knowledge to be gained. That memo had some effect, and Apollo 16 and 17 proceeded, and Apollo 17 put the first scientist on the moon. And he’s a good friend of mine now.

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This according to NASA Administrator Michael Griffin in today’s USA Today. Here is an excerpt:

“The space shuttle and International Space Station – nearly the whole of the U.S. manned space program for the past three decades – were mistakes, NASA chief Michael Griffin said Tuesday. In a meeting with USA TODAY’s editorial board, Griffin said NASA lost its way in the 1970s, when the agency ended the Apollo moon missions in favor of developing the shuttle and space station, which can only orbit Earth. “It is now commonly accepted that was not the right path,” Griffin said. “We are now trying to change the path while doing as little damage as we can.” The shuttle has cost the lives of 14 astronauts since the first flight in 1982. Roger Pielke Jr., a space policy expert at the University of Colorado, estimates that NASA has spent about $150 billion on the program since its inception in 1971. The total cost of the space station by the time it’s finished – in 2010 or later – may exceed $100 billion, though other nations will bear some of that … Griffin has made clear in previous statements that he regards the shuttle and space station as misguided. He told the Senate earlier this year that the shuttle was “deeply flawed” and that the space station was not worth “the expense, the risk and the difficulty” of flying humans to space. But since he became NASA administrator, Griffin hasn’t been so blunt about the two programs. Asked Tuesday whether the shuttle had been a mistake, Griffin said, “My opinion is that it was. … It was a design which was extremely aggressive and just barely possible.” Asked whether the space station had been a mistake, he said, “Had the decision been mine, we would not have built the space station we’re building in the orbit we’re building it in.”"

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Earlier this week NASA released its plans for the future of the U.S. human spaceflight program. The New York Times has a good series of articles on the plans and reactions to it (here and here). Were I a discerning budget examiner or congressional staffer with a knowledge of the history of the space program, I’d ask NASA why we should believe any of the following statements (borrowed from the Times reporting):

* “Michael D. Griffin, the agency’s new administrator, detailed a $104 billion plan that he said would get astronauts to the Moon by 2018.”

Does NASA have any credibility on budget or schedule projections? History suggests that cost estimates are overly optimistic and shortfalls are used as a justification to secure budget increases. As one former congressional staffer has commented, “NASA cost overruns represent full employment in some congressional districts.”

* “Dr. Griffin said that after adjusting for inflation, the program would cost just 55 percent of what it cost to put a dozen men on the lunar surface from 1969 to 1972.”

The spin begins. An actual accounting of Apollo costs (see Table 14.4 here in PDF) indicates that the program actually costs (in 2004 dollars) between $105 to $125 billion. NASA is already either playing fast and loose with the budget numbers or is ignorant of its own budget history. Neither option is particularly encouraging.

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In last Sunday’s New York Times, NASA Administrator Michael Griffin had a letter in response to critical several Times editorials,

“Terminating the shuttle program abruptly, while attractive from some points of view, carries with it grave consequences for the United States’ pre-eminence in space and would be devastating to the work force necessary to conduct any future human spaceflight program.”

There are two responses here. First, the current 2010 retirement date is completely arbitrary, and could just as easily be 2009 or 2008 or 2007. The decision should be made based on technical, financial and political realities and not an arbitrary deadline. Second, what if NASA loses another shuttle? That would certainly result in an “abrupt termination” of the program. Would that also be “devastating to the workforce”? I wonder what NASA’s contingency plans look like for the loss of another shuttle, which is a realistic possibility.

Griffin continues,

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NASA finds itself at a crossroads. It has safely returned the space shuttle to flight, but the flight also showed that troubles have resurfaced with falling foam. NASA now faces decision about what to do next. I can imagine only a few possible outcomes of this decision making process.

1. NASA pursues business as usual. This would involve seeking an engineering fix for the shuttles foam problem and then seeking to fly through 2010, as current plans call for.

This course of action can lead to three possible outcomes.

1a. NASA returns to return to flight and flies the shuttle the number of times currently scheduled and retires it on schedule.

1b. NASA returns to return to flight and flies the shuttle fewer times than currently scheduled and retires it on schedule.

1c. NASA returns to return to flight and flies the shuttle until it suffers another catastrophic loss or a less consequential engineering failure/problem that forces retirement

2. NASA decides not to deviate from business as usual and retires the Shuttle after deciding what to do with the space station (and Hubble).

As an outsider, it seems to me that there are a lot of incentives for business as usual, and a significant possibility that the Shuttle is flown until it can fly no more. And of course, NASA will face a decision to pursuer business as usual following each successful shuttle flight.

Should NASA decide to retire the Shuttle it brings in a large set of possibilities for U.S. space policy. The President’s “vision,” such as it is, allows a lot of room for discussion of where, when, how and who. It is never too early to begin a public discussion that involves more stakeholders than just NASA about what future the U.S. and its partners might pursue. To date, neither the President nor Congress has encouraged such a dialogue.

Yesterday I wondered about NASA risk-taking by comparing asteroid risk to discovery risks, and wondered how these high risk – high cost choices get made. I guessed that most science policy people consider the current shuttle risk of about 1 in 100 (proven at 1 in 57) to be absurdly high for such a pricey program, and I wondered what level of risk might be acceptable for the next generation of launch vehicles.

Well, here’s the first lick at the answer: 1 – 1000. William Broad reported in the NY Times today about NASA’s preliminary plans for orbit entry redesign – or at least the plans that industry is pushing and NASA is listening to closely. Here are some quotes:

Just as important, officials and private experts say, the small rocket for astronauts would be at least 10 times as safe as the shuttle, whose odds of disaster are estimated at roughly 1 in 100. The crew capsule atop the rocket would rendezvous in orbit with gear and spaceships that the bigger rocket ferried aloft, or with the International Space Station.

“It’s safe, simple and soon,” said Dr. Horowitz, an industry executive since he left the astronaut corps in October. “And it should cost less money” than the shuttles. Their reusability over 100 missions was originally meant to slash expenses but the cost per flight ended up being roughly $1 billion.

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The left-of-center LA Times has a strongly-worded editorial this morning calling for the permanent end to shuttle flights as well as the International Space Station, the right-of-center Washington Times has a piece suggesting that any manned mission to the moon or Mars is a waste of time and money, and of course everyone is talking about the grounding of the shuttle fleet.

Losing a two to three foot long piece of foam is a very serious matter, and drives home the point Roger made yesterday that space travel is currently a very risky business. Hopefully it also gets NASA, the public, and Congress to start talking more about what we want out of a national space program.

The space station and shuttle are the biggest obstacles to making fundamental changes at NASA. Currently the shuttle is the only system capable of launching and constructing Station, which is currently about half complete. Permanently grounding the shuttle would all but end the ISS mission, making ISS the 2nd space station the U.S. has left out in the cold. Also recall that the U.S. is but one member of the international partnership, a partnership that by and large still thinks useful science and work can eventually be accomplished in low-Earth orbit. Furthermore, this year’s Congressional debates have reflected large support for keeping the shuttle flying. S. 1281, the Senate NASA bill, directs NASA to fly the shuttle as long as is needed to avoid any “gap” between the shuttle and a replacement. A mandatory 2010 retirement in the Republican House bill, H.R. 3070, was removed in the bi-partisan version that passed last Friday. So, while there’s no doubt that ISS acts as a 50 billion dollar anchor on the U.S. space program, abandoning it will not be easy.

Tackling this will involve thinking about a number of fundamental issues. What does society want in a manned space program, what are our basic goals and what are our priorites? In the end, three key questions need to be discussed. Should the ISS mission continue? Can ISS continue without the shuttle? And can the U.S. step off the path it’s been on for the last 35 years?