Nasa chief fired as Trump administration vents frustration over moon landing delays

[GMDino]

So they want it done FAST not necessarily right.  Great.  

Best way to do that is to fire the guy with experience.  Cool. 

https://news.yahoo.com/nasa-chief-fired-trump-administration-140743406.html

Quote:The sudden removal of Nasa’s head of human exploration William Gerstenmaier on Wednesday is a clear sign the White House is increasingly frustrated with the agency’s efforts to return humans to the surface of the moon by 2024.


Donald Trump‘s administration is laser-focused on that date, which would come during a second term of his presidency, should he be re-elected.


But despite the mandate, Nasa has continued to struggle with delays and cost overruns that have threatened the programme.


And the ousting of one of the longest-serving stalwarts in the agency shows how far the White House and Nasa’s politically appointed leadership are willing to go towards disrupting Nasa and attempting to break through the bureaucracy many think has stilted its exploration efforts for years.


In March Mike Pence, the US vice president, fired the first warning shot, announcing a new, expedited timeline for Nasa’s moon landing plans.


Instead of getting humans there by 2028, he said, its new charge would be within five years. He put Nasa leaders on notice, saying if they could not complete the mission, they would be held accountable.


“In order to accomplish this, Nasa must transform itself into a leaner, more accountable and more agile organisation,” he said.


“If Nasa is not currently capable of landing American astronauts on the moon in five years, we need to change the organisation, not the mission.”


Industry officials said Mr Pence and others in the White House have become livid about the agency’s lack of progress, particularly regarding the massive rocket known as the Space Launch System, or SLS, that Nasa has been developing for more than a decade but has yet to fly.


White House officials expressed their dismay to Nasa administrator Jim Bridenstine at a meeting within the last few weeks, according to a space industry official not authorised to speak publicly about internal deliberations.


In an interview on Thursday evening, Mr Bridenstine strongly denied that, saying: ”If they are frustrated with the agency’s efforts, they haven’t communicated that to me because we’re moving out to get to the moon in 2024.”


He added: “I just want to be clear – this was my decision. I didn’t get this from the White House at all.”


There had also been tension between Mr Bridenstine and Mr Gerstenmaier, officials said.


Mr Bridenstine repeatedly had said, for example, he would not cut other programmes within the agency to fund the moon programme, known as Artemis.


But Mr Gerstenmaier contradicted him during an advisory council meeting, saying recently: “We’re going to have to look for some efficiencies and make some internal cuts to the agency, and that’s where it’s going to be hard,” he said, according to SpaceNews.


The National Space Council declined to comment, but an administration official said: “This was an internal Nasa decision, and Administrator Bridenstine’s statement speaks for itself.”


Mr Bridenstine said he thinks “very highly” of Mr Gerstenmaier, said there was no tension between them and praised his 42 years of service to the agency.


But he added he had been thinking about making a change for some time and had grown weary of the repeated schedule delays and cost overruns of the hardware needed to meet the White House’s 2024 mandate.


“At some point there comes a time for new leadership,” he said. “Cost and schedule matter. And I intend to make sure we use every taxpayer dollar wisely.”


Eddie Bernice Johnson, chairwoman of the House Science, Space and Technology Committee, blasted the decision to so abruptly remove someone with Mr Gerstenmaier’s enormous institutional knowledge.


“The Trump administration’s ill-defined crash program to land astronauts on the Moon in 2024 was going to be challenging enough to achieve under the best of circumstances,” she said in a statement.


“Removing experienced engineering leadership from that effort and the rest of the nation’s human spaceflight programmes at such a crucial point in time seems misguided at best.”


The White House, though, is keen to show real progress and tired of reports of delays in some of Nasa’s most critical programmes.


For years, the SLS has faced withering criticism for being perpetually behind schedule and over budget.


A recent report, however, caught the White House’s attention with its especially grim picture of the programme, officials said.


The Government Accountability Office found the cost of the rocket had grown by 30 percent and the first launch, initially expected in 2017, might not happen until mid-2021.


Despite those problems, Nasa continued to pay tens of millions of dollars in “award fees” to Boeing for scoring high on performance evaluations, the report said.


Another report highlighted problems with the agency’s plan to restore human spaceflight from US soil.


In his speech, Mr Pence also put Boeing and the other companies it works with on notice, saying: “If our current contractors can’t meet this objective, then we’ll find ones that will.”


Space has been a top priority for the White House, which sees exploration as a way to rejuvenate national pride as it commemorates the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing.


It has also cast space as a race between superpowers, especially regarding China, which landed a spacecraft on the far side of the moon this year, a historic first.


Mr Trump has pushed for a Space Force, a new branch of the military that would bolster the Pentagon’s efforts to defend the critical national security satellites in orbit that provide missile warning, intelligence and communications for soldiers on the battlefield.


The White House also reconstituted the National Space Council, and its first directive in late 2017 was a return to the moon.


A year and a half later, however, the White House is not impressed with the agency’s progress in fulfilling that goal.


And Mr Gerstenmaier’s ousting was seen as a way to shake up the agency, according to industry officials.


Mr Gerstenmaier first came to Nasa in 1977, and his career spanned working on the space shuttle programme and the International Space Station.


More recently, he oversaw the agency’s Commercial Crew programme, the development of a new generation of spacecraft being built by SpaceX and Boeing that would carry the first Nasa astronauts to space from US soil since the space shuttle retired in 2011. He also led the Artemis program.


Along the way, “Gerst”, as he is known, has gained the trust of many lawmakers on Capitol Hill, been the enduring face of Nasa for international partners and developed a reputation as a low-key, hardworking stalwart of the agency.


His sudden removal was “a shot not across the bow because it hit the bow,” said one industrial official. Like several others interviewed for this story, the official spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations inside Nasa and the White House.


“It’s a sign to Mr Bridenstine: get it together, or you’re out,” the official said. “If Gerst isn’t safe, no one is – or maybe just the astronauts currently on the space station.”


News of Mr Gerstenmaier’s removal broke in an email Mr Bridenstine sent to Nasa employees Wednesday evening, hours after Mr Gerstenmaier had testified on Capitol Hill during a House space subcommittee.


“As you know, Nasa has been given a bold challenge to put the first woman and the next man on the moon by 2024, with a focus on the ultimate goal of sending humans to Mars,” Bridenstine wrote.


“In an effort to meet this challenge, I have decided to make leadership changes to the Human Exploration and Operations (HEO) Mission Directorate.”


He said that Ken Bowersox, a former astronaut who had served as the deputy associate administrator for the human exploration office, would take over in an acting capacity.


Bill Hill, who had served with Mr Gerstenmaier as deputy associate administrator in the human exploration office, was also reassigned. He will be a special adviser to Steve Jurczyk, Nasa’s associate administrator.


Mr Gerstenmaier was scheduled to appear on Thursday morning at a symposium in Ohio honouring John Glenn. 
Mr Bowersox appeared in his place.


He pledged that Nasa would reach the moon by 2024.

[*michaelsean*]

I didn’t really read it like you did. It doesn’t seem it was being done right either.

[*bfine32*]

I've heard we must call it the White race for space.

[GMDino]

(07-15-2019, 09:26 PM)michaelsean Wrote: I didn’t really read it like you did. It doesn’t seem it was being done right either.

Well, to be fair, Trump has moved the goalposts repeatedly.

Once he said to stop wasting time worrying about going to the moon, then he said he were going to mars, then moon by 2028 and now 2024.

It's almost, hang with me here for a second, it's almost like he's just making stop up off the top his head with no plan and then complaining that it's not being done to his liking.

Weird.

[*TheLeonardLeap*]

(07-15-2019, 09:49 PM)GMDino Wrote: Well, to be fair, Trump has moved the goalposts repeatedly.

Once he said to stop wasting time worrying about going to the moon, then he said he were going to mars, then moon by 2028 and now 2024.

It's almost, hang with me here for a second, it's almost like he's just making stop up off the top his head with no plan and then complaining that it's not being done to his liking.

Weird.

Meanwhile the rocket's cost has ballooned 30%, and is 4 years behind schedule, and yet they are still giving Boeing 10s of millions of dollars in award fees according to your own quote. You're trying to make this a Trump thing, and this reads very much like the system had gotten a little too comfortable in bloated spending and delayed schedules, and desperately needed a shake up.

Same way that the US Government was spending around $400m per rocket launch for satellites. Everyone was comfortable with that for years, no innovation was needed. Why innovate when there's such a fat payday to cash? Then SpaceX comes in and offers the same service for anywhere between $80-100m, shaking up the industry.

Do you refuse to get rid of the people with "experience" who are charging $400m and continue to vastly overpay them because that's the way it has been done, or do you search for the better, cheaper, and quicker alternative to do things? 

[GMDino]

(07-17-2019, 01:02 AM)TheLeonardLeap Wrote: Meanwhile the rocket's cost has ballooned 30%, and is 4 years behind schedule, and yet they are still giving Boeing 10s of millions of dollars in award fees according to your own quote. You're trying to make this a Trump thing, and this reads very much like the system had gotten a little too comfortable in bloated spending and delayed schedules, and desperately needed a shake up.

Same way that the US Government was spending around $400m per rocket launch for satellites. Everyone was comfortable with that for years, no innovation was needed. Why innovate when there's such a fat payday to cash? Then SpaceX comes in and offers the same service for anywhere between $80-100m, shaking up the industry.

Do you refuse to get rid of the people with "experience" who are charging $400m and continue to vastly overpay them because that's the way it has been done, or do you search for the better, cheaper, and quicker alternative to do things? 

I'm sure there is a balance in there somewhere.  But even the guy who let him go said it was a shame.   Yes you have to watch costs.  Absolutely.  But you also can't keep changing the goal and demanding things be done "faster" without these kinds of things happening.  And when it comes to strapping some humans to a giant rocket and firing them into space I'd rather they go over budget and get it right than cut a few corners and have people die.

[*TheLeonardLeap*]

(07-17-2019, 08:59 AM)GMDino Wrote: I'm sure there is a balance in there somewhere.  But even the guy who let him go said it was a shame.   Yes you have to watch costs.  Absolutely.  But you also can't keep changing the goal and demanding things be done "faster" without these kinds of things happening.  And when it comes to strapping some humans to a giant rocket and firing them into space I'd rather they go over budget and get it right than cut a few corners and have people die.

Sure, you want to make sure your astronauts are safe, but there's a world of difference between making sure they are safe, and NASA turning returning to the moon into the F-35 project. I don't just mean that monetarily, as yes, I would prefer the astronauts to be safe and the mission successful even if it means spending a bit more than intended, but the biggest problem is unacceptable time delays.

At some point you need to look at the NASA folks and say "you already did this shit nearly 50 years to the day ago, get it together" (3 days until the 50th anniversary). The material and computer technology today are LEAGUES ahead of what they were back in the day.

NASA has sent humans to successfully walk on the moon 6 times already. A rocket test shouldn't be 4 years behind schedule. How is that even possible without massive incompetence or a complete lack of drive?

Japan landed a probe on an asteroid. 
China put a lander on the dark side of the moon. 
The US is having troubles doing things they already did 50 years ago.

Something had to change.

[GMDino]

(07-17-2019, 10:10 AM)TheLeonardLeap Wrote: Sure, you want to make sure your astronauts are safe, but there's a world of difference between making sure they are safe, and NASA turning returning to the moon into the F-35 project. I don't just mean that monetarily, as yes, I would prefer the astronauts to be safe and the mission successful even if it means spending a bit more than intended, but the biggest problem is unacceptable time delays.

At some point you need to look at the NASA folks and say "you already did this shit nearly 50 years to the day ago, get it together" (3 days until the 50th anniversary). The material and computer technology today are LEAGUES ahead of what they were back in the day.

NASA has sent humans to successfully walk on the moon 6 times already. A rocket test shouldn't be 4 years behind schedule. How is that even possible without massive incompetence or a complete lack of drive?

Japan landed a probe on an asteroid. 
China put a lander on the dark side of the moon. 
The US is having troubles doing things they already did 50 years ago.

Something had to change.

Couple things:  NASA hasn't been the same for a decade or so.  Funding cuts and a lack of public support has damaged what they can and can't do.  Plus the focus became more on cheaper non-manned exploration which they have done quite well with.

And I don't know this for sure, but if the program to get back to the moon is 4 years behind schedule it could be because the schedule keeps changing.  But that still needs to be looked at, I agree.

We also are overlooking that getting men to and from the moon 50 years ago was an AMAZING event that was just short of a miracle to pull off successfully. Even with the advanced technology we have now it is an immense project and it needs to be done right.

[*michaelsean*]

(07-17-2019, 10:25 AM)GMDino Wrote: Couple things:  NASA hasn't been the same for a decade or so.  Funding cuts and a lack of public support has damaged what they can and can't do.  Plus the focus became more on cheaper non-manned exploration which they have done quite well with.

And I don't know this for sure, but if the program to get back to the moon is 4 years behind schedule it could be because the schedule keeps changing.  But that still needs to be looked at, I agree.

We also are overlooking that getting men to and from the moon 50 years ago was an AMAZING event that was just short of a miracle to pull off successfully. Even with the advanced technology we have now it is an immense project and it needs to be done right.

Someone had to have left a notebook behind. 

[GMDino]

More info on the program, the problems and the budget problems.

https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2019/07/trump-and-nasas-uncertain-moon-plans/593986/

Quote:Editor's Note: This article is part of a series reflecting on the Apollo 11 mission, 50 years later.

The 50th anniversary of the moon landing is almost here, and NASA has gone all-out for the occasion.
The agency has been celebrating the memory of Apollo 11 for months. It has published a steady stream of archival photos and footage of the astronauts suiting up, blasting off, and posing on the lunar surface with the American flag, a pop of color against an expanse of gray. It refurbished the room at the Johnson Space Center where Mission Control monitored the journey so that now it looks the way it did in 1969, down to the coffee cups, clipboards, and packs of cigarettes. NASA headquarters even asked every communications officer at the agency to be “mindful of posting evergreen materials during the next few weeks that could get better attention once we’re past that spotlight event,” a spokesperson told me. Apollo 11 is NASA’s most famous mission, and the moon landing is one of the most defining moments in human history. It’s been moon time, all the time.

Read: What will the moon landing mean to the future?


But behind the celebrations, the atmosphere was less harmonious. As NASA commemorated one mission to the moon, the future of the next one seemed precarious.


The Trump administration wants to return Americans to the moon, a place they haven’t been since 1972, in five years—during President Donald Trump’s second term, if he is reelected. Right now, the agency doesn’t have the money to make it happen. In May, the White House asked Congress for an extra $1.6 billion in NASA’s next budget to start funding this effort, which would cost $20 billion to $30 billion and, unlike the Apollo program, rely heavily on technology bought from private companies. Astronauts would land near the south pole this time, where they could theoretically make use of water frozen in the surface. And the crew would include, for the first time, a woman. A mission to Mars—the focal objective of the Obama administration—will come later, after astronauts show they can safely live and work on the moon.  


As Congress figures out funding for the next year, NASA officials have spent the past several months talking up the new mission—named Artemis, after Apollo’s sister in Greek mythology. As with the Apollo-anniversary coverage, everyone seemed to be on message. Until, that is, the person who ordered the mission strayed.


“For all of the money we are spending, NASA should NOT be talking about going to the Moon - We did that 50 years ago,” President Trump tweeted in June. “They should be focused on the much bigger things we are doing, including Mars (of which the Moon is a part).”


Read: A short history of presidential vacillation: Mars or the moon


The tweet stunned the NASA community. Trump has been enamored of the Mars-mission idea since he took office, and once asked a NASA official whether the agency could put people on the red planet by the end of his first term. But that conversation unfolded in private and was only revealed in a tell-all book by a former White House official. In contrast, there was no denying the blustery Mars tweet, nor the blatant contradictions in its message.

“I called him after that,” Jim Bridenstine, the NASA administrator, told me of the president. “And I was very clear, ‘I want to be sure we’re in alignment.’ And he was very clear with me: ‘I know you’ve got to go to the moon to go to Mars, but you need to talk about Mars.’”


Mars is the “generational achievement that will inspire all of America,” Bridenstine said Trump told him. In his tweet, Trump seemed to acknowledge that the moon matters when it comes to making it to Mars—“of which the moon is a part.” But Mars, it seems, is a better sell.


Then, last week, another shocking moment: Bridenstine announced he was demoting NASA’s head of human exploration. William Gerstenmaier has worked at NASA since 1977, guiding the agency through spaceflight triumphs and tragedies, and shifting gears every time a new president comes along with different ideas for the nation’s space priorities. The morning of the announcement, Gerstenmaier was on Capitol Hill, testifying before members of Congress about the 2024 plan.

Although the decision came from Bridenstine, Gerstenmaier appears to be a victim of the White House’s impatience with NASA’s progress on the moon mission. The development of the rocket that is supposed to launch the Artemis astronauts, like most major exploration efforts in NASA history, is over budget and years behind schedule. Vice President Mike Pence, who gives the big space-policy speeches on behalf of Trump, is “livid,” according to The Washington Post. “If NASA is not currently capable of landing American astronauts on the moon in five years,” Pence said earlier this year, “we need to change the organization, not the mission.”


Read: Too much of a good thing at NASA

Bridenstine insists that, despite the sudden personnel shake-up, everything is fine at NASA. “We love the work [Gerstenmaier’s] done, and we’re grateful for his service to NASA and to the country,” Bridenstine told The Verge after the announcement. “But I think we’re at a time when we need new leadership.”


Bridenstine attributes the rush to the unpredictable tides of electoral politics; the next president could slash the 2024 moon plan, just as President Barack Obama canceled President George W. Bush’s moon plan in favor of Mars—a plan that didn’t make it very far, either. NASA has already seen several shifts under this administration alone. The goal was to return to the moon from the start, but the deadline jumped from 2028 to 2024 this spring. Mars seemed almost an afterthought at first, a next step for humankind that seems so inevitable that the details can be worked out later; now it’s a pressing imperative that the president wants to make sure the public hears plenty about.

Bridenstine is already carrying out Trump’s latest request. Yesterday, during a press conference about the Apollo anniversary, the administrator teased the release of a new Mars plan. “We are working right now, in fact, to put together a comprehensive plan on how we would conduct a Mars mission using the technologies that we will be proving at the moon,” Bridenstine said. “Remember, the moon is the proving ground. Mars is the destination.”
Bridenstine even mentioned a long-held target date for human exploration of Mars, despite the fact that a NASA-commissioned report recently concluded it isn’t possible, even without budget constraints. “I am not willing to rule out 2033 at all,” he said. The faster NASA gets to the moon, Bridenstine said, the faster it gets to Mars.



Read: Landing on Mars is still hard

The Trump administration faces a public skeptical of both destinations. According to a recent poll, 78 percent of respondents have a favorable view of NASA, and a majority say the government is spending too little when they’re told that the agency’s annual funding accounts for half a percent of the national budget. But just 42 percent think NASA should go to the moon in 2024, another recent poll found. A similar proportion of people think neither Mars nor the moon should be a priority. Even the two living Apollo 11 astronauts, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins, think the United States should head to Mars instead of the moon.

It is difficult, even foolhardy, to predict whether NASA astronauts will be on the moon for the next big Apollo commemoration. In the decades since the historic mission, the agency has pressed deeper into the solar system and sprinkled spacecraft on and around other worlds. By the 65th anniversary, if everything goes according to plan, there will be a little drone hopping around on a moon of Saturn, looking for signs of life—not the fossilized type, but the kind that swims or squirms today. And what of the world next door? Will people be celebrating down here, or will a few lucky representatives mark the occasion on the moon? It’s not an impossible future; after all, they’ve been there before. But it is by no means guaranteed.

[*TheLeonardLeap*]

First article: He was fired.
Second article: He got demoted.

[BakertheBeast]

Trump, being a great visionary is just looking and planning ahead to the future. Once he and the right wing Trumplican congress destroy this planet due to their climate denying , we will need another planet to live on. Give the man some credit.

[*TheLeonardLeap*]

(07-19-2019, 05:36 AM)BakertheBeast Wrote: Trump, being a great visionary is just looking and planning ahead to the future. Once he and the right wing Trumplican congress destroy this planet due to their climate denying , we will need another planet to live on. Give the man some credit.

The previous two Presidents over a span of 16 years also wanted to land people on a surface that wasn't Earth (Bush the Moon, and Obama on Mars). NASA hasn't managed to make any real progress towards either goal, and is still at least 4 years away from even test firing the rocket that would theoretically take them to the Moon so they can perfect the technology/techniques to be on Mars.

If it takes you at least 20 years to even test fire the rocket to make one of these Presidential goals happen, this isn't a Trump issue, but a NASA issue. 

Shit, NASA doesn't even launch their own astronauts to the ISS anymore. That's outsourced to the Russians (this was pre-Trump, before you get your undies in a bunch by the mention of Russians). This is despite the fact that the Russians spend only about 19.1% as much as the US does on their space program. It's kind of embarrassing that the country who first put man on the Moon, now 50 years later has to ship their astronauts to Kazakhstan to get to the ISS in a Russian Soyuz.

NASA sent men to the moon 8 years after JFK's speech. It's been done successfully 6 times already. The technology and materials are so much greater now. It should take less time than last time.

[Mike M (the other one)]

(07-15-2019, 09:26 PM)michaelsean Wrote: I didn’t really read it like you did. It doesn’t seem it was being done right either.

I didn't read it like he did either.

"And the ousting of one of the longest-serving stalwarts in the agency shows how far the White House and Nasa’s politically appointed leadership are willing to go towards disrupting Nasa and attempting to break through the bureaucracy many think has stilted its exploration efforts for years."

This line says a lot. Seems like the guy in charge was playing politics.
Things like this certainly don't help either, and the guy was demoted not fired. Seems you didn't bother to read it all the way through before you put your "Trump is bad" spin on it. :andy:


"Bridenstine attributes the rush to the unpredictable tides of electoral politics; the next president could slash the 2024 moon plan, just as President Barack Obama canceled President George W. Bush’s moon plan in favor of Mars."