Coffman urges Obama to protect Orion jobs

Rep. Mike Coffman, R-Aurora, sent a letter to President Barack Obama Thursday urging him to protect jobs in NASA’s Orion crew-capsule program.

I’d much prefer, however, that he get behind the commercial crew-cargo policy proposed to replace it, so that there might be more jobs created in the broader space industry. Clinging to the program of record after it has been shown to be unsustainable and unaffordable, merely forestalls the inevitable and squanders an opportunity (and resources) to shift to a more open-ended policy.

I’d expect a Colorado Republican to be more amenable to a capitalist policy than this. Especially an incumbent whose district includes several space-related companies which would benefit from growing markets and the creative influence of competition.

A few interesting things to note:

• The impressively crisp black and white footage of the reorientation and jettison
• The docking-hatch-view of the forward bay cover jettison and chute deployment
• The amusing (but very brief) cameo appearance of the jettisoned LAS in the background of one of the chute deployment cuts, weathervaning into a point-down attitude
• The firing of the attitude control motor, which appears as eight skinny flames near the tip of the LAS stack
• The fact that there is NO visible plume damage on the capsule or the LAS adapter cone (especially surprising given the incinerated appearance of the cone after impact with the desert floor)

The one-minute, 35-second test at White Sands Missile Range, N.M., took the capsule higher — 3,886 feet — and farther down range — 6,919 feet — than anticipated.

“That motor was quite a performer,” said Deputy Test Director Jay Estes. “You might not want to be riding in there.”

That’s the truth in more ways than he intended, I’m sure. (And I can’t be the only one who finds it amusing that one of the guys launching a big solid rocket is named “Estes”.)

Were the program to be continued, this excess capability might actually be a good thing to have, given how much the capsule has changed since the PA-1 design was frozen (more to the point: how much more it weighs now).

Landing was gentler than expected, but a heavier capsule would work against that:

The boilerplate capsule floated down to the desert floor under the three red-and-white main chutes, slowed enough by them that the telemetry system continued to operate after impact. Estes said test engineers received all of the data they expected to receive.

“It was a beautiful flight,” he said. “That went like clockwork from what I could see.”

Don Reed, the NASA test director, said the capsule touched down at about 24 feet per second (fps), less than the 33 fps impact velocity predicted at the outset. That sort of data will be helpful as NASA refines its predictive models for future developments.

The best part of the test, though, was that the discarded motor stack turned into an enormous lawn dart. I don’t have permission to share the pics that were floating around the office today, but the shots of the burning adapter cone sticking up out of the desert floor are awesome — since the entire 40-odd-foot-tall tower above it is buried nearly vertically into the ground, along with about 40% of the cone itself, with just a small bulge of dirt humped up around it. It’s such a perfect needle-jab that it’s ridiculous. As for the rest of the hardware, the early reports suggested that, given another LAS, the boilerplate capsule and even the separately-jettisoned forward bay (parachute) cover could have been launched again in short order.

NASA’s Pad Abort 1 will be the first fully integrated flight test of the launch abort system being developed for the Orion crew vehicle. The test is part of an ongoing mission to develop safer vehicles for human spaceflight applications.

Hmm…then again, maybe it won’t be.

Came across this display in the outer lobby on my way out of the office this evening – apparently, another attempt by the earnest young engineers squad to gather petition signatures in favor of preserving the program of record.

UPDATE: So, Thursday there were a couple of the aforementioned earnest young engineers staffing the table (presumably on their own time). The purpose of this signature drive was not, as it turns out, to encourage Colorado’s Congressional delegation to preserve the program of record, but to thank them for having “saved Orion”.

Which makes me wonder if there was a table like this at South Park West, where the LAS and service module teams are located…

Mike Coffman, my Congressman and the one in whose district most of Colorado’s LM facilities happen to be located, paid us a visit yesterday to discuss the efforts to stay the cancellation. He is a signatory to the letter calling for a halt to the cancellation based on language in the FY2010 budget forbidding NASA from cancelling Constellation or initiating new programs – Congressmen from the space states are threatening to use the 1974 Impoundment Control Act to reverse the new policy, at least through the end of the current fiscal year.

The meeting consisted of management giving Rep. Coffman a short briefing on the history of Constellation (and in particular Orion), what it is and is intended to do. Lots of the standard rah-rah stuff: space is cool and cutting-edge, it’s a national security issue (engineering skill and innovation), and has spinoffs to the broader economy (thankfully, Tang and velcro were not mentioned). The usual.

Then the Congressman took questions. Here again, I was a disappointed by my coworkers and their attitude of entitlement when it comes to the program. Most of the questions were about what we might do to help save our jobs by persuading Congressmen to preserve the Constellation program as-is, unchanged. This focus on job security is understandable among people who might in a few months be looking for new employment in a crappy job market, but it seems awfully short-sighted in that it ignores the potential for the new policy (if actually implemented and not just happy-talk from the Obama administration) to create a much bigger industry (and thus more job opportunities) than we currently have in manned space.

There were only a few really novel questions. In one case, some guy asked earnestly whether the violation of the law implicit in the cancellation (see above) meant that Congress could now impeach Obama. Coffman seemed to get a kick out of the absurdity of this question, and kept making joking references to it afterwards (fortunately, no mention was made of the birth certificate – this was eye-roll inducing enough).

My own question focused on the commercial alternatives, and was the ONLY one which seemed to favor them. I pointed out that the new policy provides “subsidies” (bad choice of words, but not entirely inaccurate) to help new companies enter the market for cargo and crew delivery to station, which was a good thing and something exceptionally surprising to see coming from the Obama administration, and then asked whether he and the other Congressmen fighting against the cancellation would consider keeping and supporting this element of the new policy. (Which is a watered-down expression of my views on the matter, but the best I could do extemporaneously and in that specific environment.) In his answer, Rep. Coffman asserted that his first concern was preserving constituent jobs in the district, and that meant keeping Orion and Constellation going — other considerations, like new business possibilities, would have to take a back seat. Which I found disappointing from someone who claims to be a capitalist, but not surprising from someone who is a politician. Implied in his response was the belief that any of the new jobs created by the shift to commercial services would not be in CD-6, or Colorado generally, which is surprising given the new engineering work and increased launches that Tech Center-headquartered ULA would see under the new policy.

The last memorable question was a response to mine. Someone asked, his voice quavering with either nervousness or anger, if the entire policy shouldn’t be thrown out, asserting without making any supporting argument that privatization was wrong, that it was wrong wrong wrong to privatize the space program. Oh, and we shouldn’t privatize the space program…because that would be wrong…somehow. (Never mind that privatization is not even on the table.) I don’t know if his objection was merely an emotional response to the threat to his own job, or whether he was some sort of die-hard statist/Von Braunian who considers space a sphere of activity in which only the government should be permitted to operate. Or possibly both.

As for the MarsBlog quote, it would be more worrisome if everybody in Constellation were in lock-step unanimity the same way that we see with some of the smaller organizational units that are attacking Ares I. I am sure that T.L James is entitled to his opinion, but I would like to know more about his credentials, experience, and specifically where he is coming from with his comments. I am neutral about James, but Rob Coppinger has broached the topic of T. L. James” credibility over at Flightglobal. The name is probably a pseudonym, so it will not be easy to confirm that James is telling the truth. As for his claim of “working on Orion”, we need to know what his specific job role is. Is he a structural engineer, a software guy like Metschan, or does he wash the windows? I’m not too worried about James, in any event.

Funny to discover this after spending nine hours in the office, on my day off, not washing windows.

As I’ve mentioned from time to time, I don’t discuss Orion in any detail because I don’t care to test the limits of what might get me in hot water in regards to insider information, competition sensitivity, and export control concerns. Simple as that.

While it was amusing to see one of my friends from New Orleans and what I think was the back of my boss’ head in a couple of the clips, I have to agree with Keith that the video is propaganda. And not merely propaganda aimed at saving Constellation, but saving Ares I in particular – made clear by the emotional manipulation towards the end of the vehicle, where images of children set to funereal music segue into an image of Ares I, equating it with The Space Program and describing it as “America’s Rocket”.

But nearly as apalling in this regard is the map which appears at about 6:25. Notice anything missing from this map purporting to show the players in Constellation? It isn’t ATK, Boeing, or Pratt & Whitney. While Turzillo may have merely scavenged this animation from other public video, the way that it is used here suggests that these contractors, with NASA, are the only ones taking part in Constellation. It is spliced in under the “Who Are You Guys?” segment, after all, the question in-context implying Constellation as a whole – were this video explicitly showcasing Ares I, I’d see no problem with it, but as it very clearly attempts to encapsulate the whole program it comes across as a slap in the face to the rest of us.

About three or so years ago, when Ares I’s many, many problems really started coming to light andthe fixes started to eat away at other areas of the agency’s budget, I cynically speculated that at some point all other money at NASA’s disposal would be used up, and Orion itself would have to be cancelled in order to fund the development of the vehicle meant to launch it. In Gift of the Magi fashion, we might eventually end up with a rocket that worked, but it would come at the cost of sacrificing the purpose for which it was supposedly built.

I may be reading too much into this single video by a Ares I engineer (made on his own time, and not sanctioned by his employer), but I have to wonder if this is what it will come to when the new space policy is taken up by Congress.  I’m certainly no less cynical about such things than I was three years ago, so I can readily imagine the absurd prospect of the rest of Constellation getting the axe, while Ares I is saved by grace of its stronger Congressional backing – despite being shorn of its stated reason for being.

I think Michael Mealing comes closest to my own attitude towards this development:

President Obama’s new policy for NASA is the most fiscally conservative and downright capitalist policy to come along since the agency was founded. 

And yes, it really boggles my mind that that should be the case. Obama? Capitalist? Who’da thunk? As one co-worker quipped today, Obama seems confused: he wants to nationalize a private industry in healthcare, but privatize the national program in manned space. One thing that has really surprised me today is how many of my friends have called or emailed me, expressing shock and disappointment that we are now “abandoning” space – unwittingly accepting the premise that a government program is our only possible means of getting people there. The perception that government is the sole entity capable of conducting manned spaceflight is so ingrained and unquestioned that it doesn’t seem to occur to even those who claim to be capitalists to question it.

But of course, I have to temper my surprise and excitement at this prospect, much as I did regarding the newfound enthusiasm for nuclear power Mr. Obama expressed in his SOTU last week. There’s going to be a lot of haggling to get the Congressional NASA caucus on board with this (although one Senator who could have been expected to be among the biggest roadblocks seems to be climbing on board – however reluctantly). It’s going to take some time, and who knows, just as ESAS made a dog’s breakfast of the VSE, so too could Congressional compromises and NASA resistance turn the promise of this new policy direction into yet another dead end.

Even the most Heinlein-quoting, Ayn Rand-lovin’, taxation-is-theft Wookie suiters get all weepy when NASA takes a shot in the payroll, when the simple fact of the matter is that the only spaceships the federal government has any constitutional business building should be run by the USAF and have frickin’ laser beams on them.

It’s a good thing NASA didn’t exist from the nation’s founding, or Lewis & Clark’s canoe would have taken thirty years to build and contained strips of birch bark from 72 different Congressional districts. If we want to see progress in space, we need to tell NASA to go research airfoil shapes and just declare everything that happens above X miles to be extraterritorial and tax-free.

[hat tip: Wesley]

Update: Fixed broken link.