re End of the Stick

I think that even this is a little bit too much reading into the tea
leaves.

Orion/Ares is a vehicle that has yet to be completely designed. The
operational vehicle is not going to fly for another seven years; it
hasn't even gone to Preliminary Design Review-- that isn't scheduled
for another year. It's way too early to say whether the spacecraft is
on, under, or over its weight budget; none of the main engineering is
done yet.

As an overall comment, I'd say that politics tends to be story
focussed (politics is driven by sound-bites and headlines, which need
to tell a good story). On the other hand, real engineering is
focussed on data and engineering requirements. There's a real
disconnect here-- engineers may design something based on good
engineering considerations, but if it's not glittyer and cutting edge,
or doesn't fit the story currently in vogue, it's politically boring.
The commentary on sci.space.* is usually more at the politics level--
a good storyline mostly will out-shout data in this forum, unless the
data is attached to a good story. I see a lot of "engineering review
by commenting on the pictures" comments. This may be amusing, but
it's not engineering.


On 4/26/07 11:15 PM, "Pat Flannery" <flanner@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Assuming you mean "why", NASA Watch loves to sling dirt at NASA, and
this would be a major news item for them; I can't believe that they
haven't stumbled on it yet, which could mean it's BS, or somebody named
Young said something he wasn't supposed to.
Note that these quotes of his come from someone's recollection of what
he said, not from him himself.
So in short, all we have on this is Dr. James Busby's word for it.
http://collectspace.com/ubb/Forum39/HTML/000114.html
To me, the remarks he quotes seem awfully severe on Young's part.
If this is all indeed the case, then we've got a overweight spacecraft
design matched to a under performing booster; given NASA's track record
with manned programs over the past twenty years, this unfortunately
sounds like business as usual for them.

--
Geoffrey A. Landis
http//www.sff.net/people/geoffrey.landis

.

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