NetNews Usenet Archive 1993 #3/NN_1993_3.iso/spool/sci/space/19873

Internet Message Format | 1993-01-28 | 7.5 KB

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From: [e-mail] (Bill Higgins-- Beam Jockey)
Newsgroups: sci.space
Subject: Reasons for SS(was Re: Precursors to Fred (was Re: Sabatier Reactors.))
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Date: 28 Jan 93 02:11:46 GMT
References: <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]>
Organization: Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory
Lines: 139
NNTP-Posting-Host: fnalf.fnal.gov

In article <[e-mail]>, [e-mail] (Allen W. Sherzer) writes:
> In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] writes:
>
>>Allan if you have looked at any of the information that has been put out
>>about SSF in the last decade you will see that the PRIMARY mission of
>>SSF is to be a laboratory in space.

This is true as far as it goes. It has always been *claimed* that SSF
will be a major scientific laboratory, and that's a fundamental reason
to build it. (In a minute, I will get to Allen's interesting dissent.)
I think the public statements on this are pretty much propaganda.  The
usefulness of Fred (or Mir, for that matter), judged solely on its
potential contributions to science, does not justify its cost compared
to other labs and facilities.  The "life science" does little to
address fundamental issues in biology or benefit other biological
disciplines.  Microgravity materials science, currently the #2
justification for the station, has been waning in popularity since the
ballyhoo days of the early Eighties.

The U.S. wants a space station for reasons OTHER than science.  It
keeps NASA people working (sounds cynical, but this does have value to
the nation).  It develops another step in regular spaceflight
operations.  It tries out techniques and systems and capabilities that
the U.S. would like to have for even more glorious and glamorous
projects someday-- granted, the Russians have already covered a lot of
this ground.  It serves as a focus for national prestige and a warm
fuzzy feeling that Americans are moving into the 21st century. At this
late date, it provides work for hard-pressed aerospace contractors in
a variety of Congressional districts.

Here's an example. It's been decreed (I think in a National Academy of
Sciences study) that the highest priority for Fred's research should
be life science.  This is mostly useful for deeper understanding of space
medicine; it has little to do with cracking the genetic code or curing
cancer or understanding evolution or other major issues in medical and
biological science.  But it *is* very important for sending people
further into space, or for longer times, which NASA hopes to do in
some remote post-Freedom era.

So Allen writes:

> Actually, if you look at the information that has been put out about
> SSF in the last decade you will see that the PRIMARY mission of SSF is...
>
> A. Life science (at least to the life science community).
> B. Microgravity (at least to the microgravity people)
> C. Assembly point for Moon/Mars (At least to the manned space crowd)
> D. A mechanism to teach us how to live and work in space (at least to
>    the space colonization crwod)
> E. Well paying jobs for your district (at least to Congress).
> F. (insert your favoriet special interest here)
>
> In short, Fred was to be everything to everybody. Your belief that
> a particular one of these was actually (we mean it this time) the
> primary mission requires very very selective reading of history.

Oh, boy, trivia time for old-timers!

F1. A platform for astronomical studies from low Earth orbit.
No kidding, they had telescopes bolted to it in early drawings, where
the observations somehow wouldn't mind a structure with astronauts
bouncing around inside it.  I recall in particular an astrometric
scope David Black was pushing to look for planets around other stars.

F2. Earth observation.  Doesn't make much sense in a 28-degree orbit,
but there were downward-pointing radars and radiometers in the early
paintings.  I guess it would be good for testing out prototype systems
which might need human attention, or for studying the tropics.  For a
long while, Space Station owned a big fancy polar-orbiting platform to
do Earth-obs stuff; as years went on, even Congress recognized the
orthogonality (-: to what Fred was doing and NASA broke it out into a
separate multibillion-dollar project we now know as the Earth
Observing System.

F3.  Space physics.  There were designs, for example, for a
large superconducting spectrometer for cosmic rays.  Such instruments
went away as the station was downsized and redesigned to keep costs
down.

At this point, A, B, D, and E are still in business, while C, F1, F2,
and F3 have vanished.  There are plans for a "Phase II" station, an
extensive expansion of Fred after it's been running for a few years,
which might put some of this back (along with more power, lab space,
larger crew, etc.).  I'm dubious about the chances of funding such
major upgrade in the face of a Shuttle operating budget, a Fred
operating budget, and any other little science or technology projects
NASA may want to do for the next decade or three.

A program as expensive as Fred has to be "everything to everybody."
You have to have political support from enough interest groups to keep
it going.  NASA has managed it so far, but in throwing most scientific
disciplines overboard it has lost much of the support it might have
had from the scientific community-- though the Space Station might
never have been a *good* place to do astronomy or Earth science.

>>Allen building SSF or any other large structure in space is a mere engineering
>>exercise that we learned long ago.

Oversimplification that Dennis should *know* is gonna get stuffed down
his throat...

> So why is the truss work package over a billion over budget and still
> out of control? No Denis, since nothing like this has ever been build
> in space before it cannot be called 'mere engineering'.

Now that Dennis has finally learned to spell Allen's name correctly,
Allen has begun to misspell *his* name.  Sigh.

For one thing, Dennis, it doesn't make sense to argue (as you and I
did) that experimenters need to learn how to build their furnaces and
gloveboxes and centrifuges and instruments and debug them on Spacelab
and COMET flights... and then claim that Fred's designers will find it
easy to slap together a space station and operate it.  *Both* tasks
are a "mere engineering exercise" in that sense.  You know better than
I do just how much work goes into "mere engineering" for space
systems!

>>There are no mysteries involved in the process.

But there are plenty of surprises!

> Except for why in hell it takes twice as long and costs three times
> what it is supposed to. (Although given NASA's poor performance in
> almost every aspect of cost estimating and management maybe this
> isn't that strange).

Allen, this isn't true for *everything* NASA does, especially outside
the nasty problems of Shuttle costs.

Okay, now I'll be catching hell from *both* of these guys.

--
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