Swedish Space Corporation - Sven’s Space Blog

Sven Grahn is a pioneer in Swedish space activities. He started his career as a rocket assemply technician at the Kronogård base in 1962 and has remained true to the

Swedish space business ever since. Sven has had leading roles in all SSC's satellite projects, and has been engaged in most other SSC projects too... Before his retirement in 2006, he was Senior Vice President for Engineering and Corporate Communications. He is still very much involved in a number of projects for the SSC, but now as Senior Adviser. Swedish media often turn to Sven for expert comments on various space events, and his close colleagues know that they get quicker answers regarding space history from Sven than by googling the web! Sven's CV

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Faster, better, cheaper ...

1/6/2008 5:29:13 PM | Permalink

FASTER, BETTER, CHEAPER REVISITED

The other day I found my notes from the conference "Low-cost Planetary Missions" at the Applied Physics Lab/Johns Hopkins University 12-15 April 1994. This conference was held at the height of the Faster, Better, Cheaper paradigm promulgated by NASA administrator Dan Goldin, still a very controversial figure in U.S. space history. I must admit I was smitten by Goldin’s speech at the conference. Despite all his shortcomings, and the disrepute into which the ‘faster, better, cheaper’ paradigm fell because of some spectacular Mars probe failures, I think Dan Goldin had some good ideas. I think the readers of this blog might enjoy my notes from this epoch in space history – 14 years ago. Here they are:

…Dan Goldin’s dinner speech 14 April 1994
NASA administrator Dan Goldin (picture on the right) gave a speech at the banquet in the evening of April 14.This man is brilliant! If successful he will turn NASA and the whole space business upside down. When he entered the rostrum at the conference you could hear a pin drop. He took Kurt Cobain's suicide as a starting point and how young people in the U.S. have nothing to look forward to, no vision: "Young people do not see the future in positive terms. They have a bleak attitude towards the future". Then he asked what the space program can do to help and replied himself: “By seeking answers to the Big Questions about how the Universe, the Solar System and the planets were formed, why Earth looks like it does…” He continued: "America tries to change from an old survival mode (Cold War) to a new survival mode with a big investment in the future."

Then he attacked all the old ways of doing business and that NASA must reduce its infrastructure. "The Space Race made cost irrelevant, politics caused NASA budgets to increase, but in the last 12 months NASA’s budget has been cut by 30%. People are always asking me: Why can't we have more money for space science, or, why can't we have more money for aeronautical research? My answer is: What program are you prepared to cancel?", There are those who want to cling to the past - but the past is gone and forgotten. Also the NASA infrastructure is too big – it will have to collapse!

The space community must shape up! We have set a cost cap of 150 M$ for the Discovery-class missions to the solar system. Why is it that all proposals come in at precisely this figure? If we had set the cost cap at 100 M$ the proposals would have come in at that number! Shape Up!

And industry must also deliver what they promise; Industry scans the federal budget and spots a program costed at, say, 100 M$. How does industry think? Well, let’s quote 60 M$, win the contract and then recoup the remaining 40 M$ on changes! These old habits have to disappear! The key words for the future are:

Accountability: If projects run over budget they will be canceled. I am looking forward to the first opportunity to cancel a project for this reason!
Teamwork: The US does not have to do everything; we must work with other nations!
Excellence: Our space missions must feed technology back to society.
Relevance,.."

Dan Goldin also revealed that NASA had asked for a go-ahead from the White House to proceed with development program for a "Single Stage to Orbit" (SSTO) launch vehicle and added: "I believe that in the very near future it will be possible to put a small satellite in orbit for less than 5 M$".

Great, this guy has a vision – something that we have long wanted in the ESA programme and in our own program. Goldin’s speech was like a three-star restaurant in the Guide Michelin: Worth the whole trip!

Luncheon address on April 12 by Dr Wesley Huntress, NASA Associate Administrator for Space Science

"…Low-Cost in space science does not mean using off-the-shelf technology. We cannot afford to be conservative - we have to start being developers, not just assemblers. Low mass means low cost.
We have to move from a paradigm characterizeed by 'Design and spend with minimum testing’ to one of 'Design and test to minimize spending'. We should also go forward to the past and give back the program manager full authority.
NASA now has a new high-tech policy: 'Each mission must contribute to the development of spaceflight technology'…"

Panel debate on April 14 on "How to reduce mission costs"
I took part in this debate that was moderated by Gerard Haerendel. I said: “We all know how to do it, but there are three basic prerequisites:

You have to be desperate
There has to be a total lack of money (at least initially)
There has to be an iron-clad launch date, either through a piggyback launch or through a launch window determined by celestial mechanics. “

The old NASA “fox” Mario Acuna added from the audience: "Obscurity, if they know what you are doing they will not let you". Yes, that is the way it is. When a project becomes a matter of national priority it cannot fail, everybody wonders how it is faring and what to (in all well-meaning) stick their nose into it!

Various notes

NASA:s Discovery-missions into the Solar System are supposed to be low-cost missions costing 150 MUSD per project and take 36 months to complete. The 150 MUSD do not include launch and mission operations.
The Brazilian space organization INPE is planning their own equatorial mobile phone system with 8 satellites in orbits at 2000 km. The system is called ECO-8.
I learned a new term from a JPL guy (Lane) who is developing the MOx experiment for the Mars 94 lander: ODR="Only Design Review". In a crash program you can only find time for one review.
Gordon Whitcomb (started the SMART-1 project three years later) from ESA described ESA's attempt to start a small satellite program, and the institutional obstacles to such a program. Also, ESA has defined a small program as one with a single instrument and the argument is that you get more out of 10 instruments on one satellite that gather co-ordinated data than single instruments on ten different satellites. All scientific proposals for small satellite missions were rejected by ESA:s selection board as being not of sufficient caliber (There were several dozen proposals). The fair industrial return to each member country will make a small program a management nightmare and as long as ESA does not change the way these rules are implemented there is no way ESA can conduct small missions. Whitcomb's talk was very candid but I do not agree with the notion of single-instrument for small missions. Even on our little ASTRID micro satellite there are three instruments. A bizarre twist to Whitcomb's talk was that he kept repeating the need for a small European launcher while assuring the auditorium that there is no program possible!

Panel debate on April 14: Miniaturization, Fact or Fiction?
Mario Acuna (see picture on the right), NASA Goddard's magnetometer-guru chaired this panel. Mario’s introductory remarks in short:

"The real cost drivers in space science programs are often associated with the acceptable risk issue. What is the acceptable risk from a scientific or political point of view? You may say that the following formula applies:

Program Cost= AvailableDollars/AcceptableRisk

Also, to cut costs the probability of the spacecraft failing catastrophically should not be lower than the probability for a catastrophic launch vehicle failure.
Another cost driver is the fact that the actual work is messed up by the decision process – introduces delays that cost manpower. We should put more emphasis on the PRODUCT than on the PROCESS, but this is incompatible with current government procurement emphasis. We should de-emphasize the PROCESS, i.e. we should get rid of the lawyers!!!!!
To comment Dr Huntress' talk; is 'high-tech' really science-driven? Science is a great adapter of new technology, not a driver.
Everybody talks about miniature instruments, but there is no miniature launch vehicle!
We have to move from an adversary management of our space programs to a collaborative management style that we had in the past! ..."

Chuck Carlson, Berkeley:
"... Laptop computers drive electronics miniaturization and that is where most of our progress in miniaturization can be made. We look at commercial devices and test them for SEU and SELs. The result is that FPGA:s (Field Programmable Gate Arrays) like Actel and Xilink replace discrete logic. An ideal technology for small satellites ... "

Roy Torbert, Univ of New Hampshire
"... FPGA crucial to our Cluster instrument. 'Faster, cheaper .. but also MORE?? To be able to make the small satellite revolution a success you need more missions in the same way as mass production has made the laptop such a success ... "

I hope you have enjoyed this look back into space history. We still battle with the same equation of costs, schedule, and reliability!

Sven Grahn

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Author: Olle Norberg (6/17/2008 8:24:20 PM)

I also have vivid memories of that conference, it is rather amazing how smitten we all were of getting things done on a shoestring. I still believe that there should be missions carried out that way, to quickly advance for example instrument techniques. I remember a meeting during the conference with the whole NASA deep space network team trying to figure out how to help us with our planned Hannes asteroid mission. Pity we didn't pull that one off!