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Flagship and Competed Missions. 22 March 2018. The Cold War Ends. Reagan ’ s ‘ Star Wars ’ Strategic Defense Initiative put pressure on security, technology and economic performance in the USSR Gorbachev ’ s Glasnost (openness) led to more public criticism and unrest in the Soviet bloc
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Flagship and Competed Missions 22 March 2018
The Cold War Ends • Reagan’s ‘Star Wars’ Strategic Defense Initiative put pressure on security, technology and economic performance in the USSR • Gorbachev’s Glasnost (openness) led to more public criticism and unrest in the Soviet bloc • Client states in Eastern Europe broke away: German reunification in 1990. • Soviet Union became the Russian Federation
The Peace Dividend • With the end of the Cold War, a basic purpose of the space program was removed • Defense and space advocates scrambled to find new justifications: NASA ‘science’ and the ISS; Life on Mars • The promised ‘peace dividend’ never materialized • Peace dividend is a political slogan popularized by US President George H.W. Bush and UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in the early 1990s, purporting to describe the economic benefit of a decrease in defense spending. It is used primarily in discussions relating to the guns versus butter theory. The term was frequently used at the end of the Cold War, when many Western nations significantly cut military spending
Space Exploration Initiative • President George H. W. Bush’s Space Exploration Initiative (SEI) was for many a process of rediscovery. In the November 1989 90-Day Study report, their first major statement on how to carry out SEI, NASA planners described an elaborate and costly scheme to construct a lunar base using modules and equipment delivered atop unmanned landers. Construction gangs of astronauts would use a high-tech bulldozer or grader to prepare the ground and an “unloader” to lift the modules off the landers and position them on the surface. After assembly, a high-tech end-loader or “snow-blower” would bury the modules under lunar dirt to provide radiation shielding. • SEI’s high estimated cost and consequent chilly reception in Congress, combined with NASA’s growing realization that an excessively large number of spacewalks would be needed to assemble and maintain its modular, Space Shuttle-launched Space Station Freedom (SSF) in low-Earth orbit (LEO), drove SEI planners to seek a new lunar outpost concept that would cost less and require as little lunar surface assembly as feasible. They hoped that such an outpost might serve as a stepping stone between early brief lunar sorties and the 90-Day Study‘s vision of a complex constructed base. The outpost concept they found was, however, not new; it was, in fact, a generation old.
How to do more with less? • Replace large, expensive space science missions with small focused missions proposed and led by scientist Principal Investigators: PI-led missons • Explorer and Discovery missions were the first, now most new missions are in this style, including larger New Frontiers missions • Faster, cheaper, better approach
Faster, Cheaper, Better • If there is one phrase that characterizes former Administrator Goldin's approach to running NASA, it was the phrase "Faster - Better - Cheaper". While no one could ever seem to explain this management mantra such that all three terms were given equal importance, it soon became clear what it really meant to implement FBC was less money. Indeed, the 'faster' and 'better' you were at cutting costs, the more bragging rights you could exert. The twin Mars mission disasters in 1999 provide a classic illustration. • In the September 1999 edition of JPL's in-house newspaper "JPL Universe", just before two JPL-managed spacecraft slammed into Mars, the flight operations manager for the Mars Climate Orbiter said: "It's going further and faster with fewer people and with a smaller budget. If we're successful, I think we'll raise the bar on the whole faster, better, cheaper mantra to a new level - to a level that's not been attained by anyone else."
Program Office Overview • In 2014, NASA’s Science Mission Directorate (SMD) formed the “Planetary Missions Program Office” at Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Alabama. • Consolidate management of Discovery, New Frontiers, and Solar System Exploration Programs (difference in magnitude of mission) • These programs include 3 kinds of projects (difference in funding line and management):
Program Office Overview (2) • Announcement of Opportunity (AO)- Selected missions. • Principal Investigator (PI)-led missions that are complete, self-standing investigations through an AO • Directed Missions • Complete, self-standing investigations that are assigned directly to a NASA center or other implementing organization by SMD. When assigned to a center, typically led by a Project Manager • Missions of Opportunity (MO) • Historically, PI-led, these projects are an element of another mission, often led by a foreign space agency (instrument or other hardware contribution). • No exchange of funds (usually)!
Competed Missions (AO) • Can be selected to reduce and contain the costs and risks • Have genuine science objectives, although limited • NASA and its centers retain the ultimate authority (this is appropriate for public funds) • Record shows that they also experience significant cost growth, for similar reasons: poor planning, mistakes, new developments • Record shows very few are ever cancelled.
Flagship Missions • In the old style: “the last of the dinosaurs” • Large objectives, large teams yield major results • High cost estimates and often over-runs • Hard to cut back on objectives: • De-scoping is not efficient • Existing constituencies can lobby effectively
NASA Flagship Missions • Galileo (end of mission 2003) • Cassini (end of mission Sep 15, 2017) • Curiosity (ongoing since 2011) • Mars 2020 (launch 2020) • Europa Clipper (launch 2022?) • Europa Lander (not funded) • Mars sample return (not funded)
New Frontiers Program • The New Frontiers Program represents a pivotal step in the advancement of solar system exploration. The missions in the program tackle specific solar system exploration goals identified as top priorities by consensus of the planetary community. • The New Frontiers strategy is to explore the solar system with frequent, medium-class spacecraft missions that conduct high-quality, focused scientific investigations designed to enhance our understanding of the solar system. The program objective is to launch high-science-return planetary investigations on an average of one every 36 months. Added to the NASA budget for the first time in 2003, New Frontiers builds on the innovative approaches used in NASA's Discovery and Explorer Programs.
New Frontiers Missions • New Horizons (Pluto flyby) (2006-??) • JUNO (Jupiter orbiter) (2011-??) • NASA selected 2 for further study in 2017: CAESAR and Dragonfly • Osiris-Rex (Asteroid sample return) • Launched 2016 • Studying Bennu 2018-2021 • Sample return to Earth by 2023
Discovery Program • NASA's Discovery Program gives scientists the opportunity to dig deep into their imaginations and find innovative ways to unlock the mysteries of the solar system. • When it began in 1992, this program represented a breakthrough in the way NASA explores space. • For the first time, scientists and engineers were called on to assemble teams and design exciting, focused planetary science investigations that would deepen the knowledge about our solar system.
As a complement to NASA's larger “flagship” planetary science explorations, the Discovery Program goal is to achieve outstanding results by launching many smaller missions using fewer resources and shorter development times. • The main objective is to enhance our understanding of the solar system by exploring the planets, their moons, and small bodies such as comets and asteroids. The program also seeks to improve performance through the use of new technology and broaden university and industry participation in NASA missions.
NASA's Discovery Program (as compared to New Frontiers, Explorer, or Flagship Programs) is a series of lower-cost, highly focused American scientific space missions that are exploring the Solar System. It was founded in 1992 to implement then-NASA Administrator Daniel S. Goldin's vision of "faster, better, cheaper" planetary missions.
NASA Discovery Missions • Mars Pathfinder • NEAR Shoemaker • Lunar Prospector • Stardust • Genesis • Comet Nucleus Tour (CONTOUR) • MESSENGER • Deep Impact • Dawn • Kepler • Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory, (GRAIL) • InSight Mars lander • Lucy, Psyche and NEOCam selected in 2017
Small bodies seem more likely to win
Conclusions • NASA’s space science program includes both directed and competed programs • Both follow scientific advice from the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine (more later in this course) • The flurry of activity hides the lower funding and frequency of space missions since the end of the cold war • Was there a peace dividend?
