SLS is still a national disgrace

14 pointsposted a year ago
by keithly
(caseyhandmer.wordpress.com)

7 Comments

floxy

a year ago

Since they mention the Chandra X-ray telescope defunding, I found that there are about 180 people (according to the FAQ: https://www.savechandra.org/faq) working on the project. Anyone know the breakdown of those roles? Like there are:

    6 Operators who are responsible for the day-to-day pointing of the instrument, monitoring systems for health, etc.  Some redundancy here so that people can take vacations, not be on-call all the time, etc.
    3 Astrophysics post-docs who decide which proposals are worth spending telescope time on. (Need an odd number to break ties)
    1 Orbit mechanics specialist (to make sure it stays aloft, etc)
    3 Systems engineers who have a good "big-picture" idea of how the satellite works
    2 X-ray instrument subject matter experts
    2 programmers for firmware updates of the systems on the satellite
    2 programmers for programming systems on the ground
    2 I.T. support
    1 data analyst 
    2 electrical engineers for electrical issues debugging on the satellite, etc.
    1 RF/EE for the ground based and comms stuff
    2 mechanical engineers for mechanical issues debugging on the satellite, etc.
    2 thermal systems engineers, to make sure things are at the proper temperatures
    2 more astrophysics Ph.D's for helping answer technical questions about the instrument from the principle investigators for each proposal accepted for telescope time.
    5 managers
    2 receptionist/admins
    1 HR
    1 head honco
...plus 140 other full-time roles? Or what does the day to day operations look like for this type of instrument? Must be more than tell the telescope where to point, and then feeding the stream of bits to the various universities to interpret the data.

verzali

a year ago

You don't need much more than you've listed to operate it, for sure. Especially for a spacecraft that's fairly old and should be behaving in well established ways.

Only thing I can think is the Chandra project is funding researchers (e.g Postdocs etc) from it's budget. Otherwise they're being really inefficient and could surely keep it running with a quarter of the staffing (but knowing NASA, that's a possibility...).

Also possible there's a lot of instrument specialists, but that's not a full time job. Perhaps they are including part time roles in that 180 job total.

verzali

a year ago

This guy really didn't like working for NASA, huh? He has some valid points, but they're really smothered by the massive chip he has on his shoulder. Would be a better article if he clearly focused on the points about the SLS.

Yizahi

a year ago

He wrote an article focused on the points about SLS four years ago, it is linked right on top of this article. And situation got worse since then in EVERY aspect of the program. So naturally he now expanded the scope and pinpoints the problem on the Nasa as a whole, illustrating that SLS is not an outlier, it is one of the many systemic issues in the Nasa.

You write that he has "some" valid points. Could you please elaborate which of the points in this article are not valid or maybe incorrect?

verzali

a year ago

The SLS has actually flown since then, so its hard to say it has gotten worse in "EVERY" aspect. I'm not a fan of the SLS or the way NASA is running Artemis, and I can say plenty to criticize the way they work. Believe me, I've had enough conversations with NASA bureaucrats to get plenty of frustration with them. But this article is hard to follow and seems to miss the fundamental problems (which is not uncommon with people overly focused on technical matters at what is, in essence, a giant governmental organisation).

I don't have the time or inclination to point out every error in the article, but it especially annoyed me when he implied only NASA engineers know how to build space telescopes (false), when he implies Starship conops are simple (they are not), when he implies no progress has been made on NEO asteroid detection (NEO Surveyor is a follow-up to NEOWISE, not something that has taken "30 years" to develop), when he thinks the Europa Clipper MOSFET issue has been ignored (I know some of the people who worked on that over the summer, and I know the outcome), when he seems to think LEO re-entry materials can be used for high-speed lunar returns (no, that's not how this works), and when he seems to think a student project qualifies him to talk on demand for the SLS.

Yes, there are some valid points in all of those, but he is presenting them in an exaggerated and over the top style better suited for X than for a long form article that purports to find a better way forward (which, surprise, surprise, is simply "pay SpaceX to do everything").

user

a year ago

[deleted]