Unfortunately, the rapid
pace of Mars projects (launches every 26 months), and the extreme cost
constraints on the program limited the up-front study funding to less than
1 percent of the project cost. Therefore, the risk was poorly understood.
There are some activities
underway to help this situation, for instance "Team X" at JPL (the Jet
Propulsion Laboratory) is using a sophisticated set of computer models
to quickly define and cost projects. However, when conditions vary greatly
from what has been done before, such models are less reliable and larger
cost reserves must be built in, which often won't fit within the funding
allocated.
However, I disagree with
Gentry that unbiased, outside reviews are the only key to project success.
As he says, bureaucratic cost reviews are ineffective for uncovering engineering
flaws. They are very useful, however, for what I call "achieving alignment,"
-- that is, for making sure the people providing the money understand what
they can expect to get for it, and that the projected return is worth the
cost. While this was accomplished for Mars Global Surveyor and Pathfinder,
it was never achieved for the rest of the Mars Surveyor Program. "Requirements"
were levied without sufficient review and consensus on their impact on
cost and risk.
However, project reviews
are not "one size fits all," as Gentry seems to indicate in the latter
part of his column. "Unbiased outsider" technical reviews can also be ineffective
if applied to the wrong problem. For one thing, "peer" reviews by people
most knowledgeable about, and dedicated to the project are most likely
to catch small technical errors of the kind that killed the 1998 Mars missions.
Those people are on the projects, or are part of the program or
working on a related project. People who are completely unbiased and not
connected with the project have to be educated on details, and this can
add a great burden of cost to the project. In addition, almost no one with
the requisite technical knowledge is really "unbiased." The Pathfinder
review board, for example (of which Gentry was a member), contributed greatly
to the success of the mission. But the members of the board had to overcome
their belief systems (established on the Viking project) of the need for
more comprehensive testing on the scale of the $3.6 billion Viking mission
(in 1992 dollars), which was unaffordable by the $250 million Pathfinder
mission. A compromise was eventually struck that balanced budget with risk.
A review process needs to
be designed for better, faster, cheaper missions which is appropriate to
meet all the objectives: budgetary, strategic/scientific, risk posture,
technical details, operational strategy, etc.
Donna Shirley
President of Managing Creativity;
Assistant Dean of Engineering at the University of Oklahoma; former manager
of NASA's Mars Exploration Program; member of SPACE.com's Board
of Advisors
A reader responds to Anatoly
Zak's article
"Cosmonauts' Flight Plan: Find the Leak on Mir."
To the Editor:
Regarding the article on
searching for air leaks in Mir, it seems no one has tried the low-tech
approach mentioned in many science fiction stories. This would be "balloons"
(of a designed fragility) containing some quick setting adhesive, set free
to float around the station.
Natural air currents would
sweep them into any leak, causing them to pop and seal, at least temporarily,
the leaks that are so small they are difficult to find. In other words,
a sort of free-fall clotting factor. Larger leaks would attract more of
them quicker, providing another margin of safety. The adhesive could be
designed with a marker color to show up spots to be repaired on a more
permanent basis.
Ron Seiden
Attorney Robert Becerra's
opinion piece
"The Ultimate Real Estate Deal" asserted that private-property rights,
not government programs, will jump-start humanity's journey to the planets.
Among the reader responses:
To the Editor:
(Editor's note: The opinion
piece included a statement that "government programs are slow and plodding.")
As opposed to private-enterprise
space missions, which release plenty of press releases, make lovely Powerpoint
presentations at space conference after conference, but never actually
launch anything, I presume....
Private enterprise has a
clear role in space (as far as I know for certain, the only NASA contractor
which runs on a nonprofit basis is the SWRI [Southwest Research Institute]
in Arizona, although I assume that universities like Johns Hopkins probably
do as well... Ball and Boeing and LockMart definitely don't); but without
copious supplies of government money, the exorbitant costs and limited
returns from the space environment will scuttle any attempt to raise significant
private money for the project...which makes the argument about transorbital
property rights as much a nonentity as the Moon Treaty it berates. Further
down the track, I can see clear problems with unlimited property rights,
even when the technology and financing exists to make the issue real: if
we've learnt anything from economic history, it's than unfettered capitalism
is as bad as its reverse and that clear regulations will need to be in
place to limit the freedom of entrepreneurs to exploit space resources
before missions of real finance (i.e., substantive lunar mining. as opposed
to the sampling missions proposed by ASR) are allowed to fly.
Rereading this piece, I can
only describe it as a theology masquerading as analysis; and a definite
drop in SPACE.com's Opinions standards.
Robert Clements
To the Editor:
Leave it a lawyer to come
up with policies that they will profit from.
Stephen Waldern
To the Editor:
In his article "The Ultimate
Real Estate Deal," Robert Becerra implies that extraterrestrial property
rights are the key to jump-starting private space industry. This is an
issue that is several decades premature. The major barrier to formulating
a successful space business plan is finding sufficient, timely sources
of revenue.
The space business is not
an industry where a small group of dedicated individuals with a few computers
and a month's supply of pizza can build a thriving business. The minimum
investment in a space venture is on the order of hundreds of millions of
dollars. Since the space business is inherently risky, investors rightly
demand returns of 25 to 30 percent, or more. From a financial standpoint,
these two facts result in projects that require substantial returns in
a very short period of time.
The ability to establish
ownership of extraterrestrial resources does nothing to solve this problem.
Given the current state of the space economy, there is no immediate prospect
of revenues from these resources. If an asteroid can produce a billion
dollars of saleable ore 30 years from now, that revenue is worth only about
$1.2 million today (assuming our 25 percent discount rate). This sort of
venture is hardly going to attract financing in a dot-com world where billionaires
are being made virtually overnight.
Without government investment
to defray the up-front costs and to reduce the riskiness of doing business
in space, it is unlikely that private ventures will branch out much beyond
the traditional communications sector.
Matt Medlin
Graduate Research Assistant,
Space System Design Laboratory, Georgia Institute of Technology
To the Editor:
With regard to the article
titled "The Ultimate Real Estate Deal" by Robert Becerra posted on April
4, 2000:
Private ownership is indeed
the way to colonize the stars, along with private space transportation
through space tourism and private survey probes, etc. Maybe
the title of the article should be changed to ... "Lawyers
Conquer the Stars."
Rory Lindsay
PropellerHead Productions,
Ltd., New Zealand
SPACE.com welcomes
Letters
to the Editor. Letters intended for publication should be under 250 words,
and may be edited for style and clarity.
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