Jeff Bell

Grypd · 2007-03-21 17:42:29

NASA's Commercial Orbital Transportation Services program has been widely hailed by the alt.space community as a breakthrough in US launch policy, but the numbers just don't add up. This project will be too late and too little to make a significant contribution to closing the post-Shuttle ISS supply gap - except perhaps as a slush fund to cover cost overruns in Orion/Ares.

not very confidant of this whole program is he

Mars_B4_Moon · 2007-03-22 02:24:33

He makes a few good points but the article is inacurate
sounds like rather than looking hard at the numbers and facts, he's starting to support the idea of some kind of NASA Alt-Space conspiracy

Grypd · 2007-05-01 16:26:41

The Griffin Space Fantasy

NASA boss Mike Griffin says we can do three Apollo-scale projects over the next 50 years without increasing the NASA budget. It sounds too good to be true - and it is. Griffin's analysis of NASA's past relies on questionable economics and his vision of the future includes political and technical impossibilities.

Mr Bell has unfortunatly got a chance to have a good bite into what is rapidly becoming clear that NASA just does not have the money to actually accomplish what it has promised.

The March 14 2007 issue of Aviation Week contained an article by NASA Administrator Mike Griffin which apparently is the most detailed statement yet of his long-range plans. In this article and related press interviews, Griffin makes a case that NASA is not really as underfunded as many critics say, and that the US can afford three major space projects on the scale of Project Apollo over the next 50 years without major budget increases.
Specifically, he argues that a steady budget of about 14 billion FY2000 dollars per year can comfortably accommodate the Moon landing, Moon base, and Mars landing programs proposed by President Bush in February 2004.
There has been surprisingly little discussion of this key article. Possibly many space advocates suspect that the news is too good to be true. After all, on March 16, Griffin appeared in person on Capitol Hill to argue for a major increase in NASA funding of exactly the kind he had claimed was unnecessary in this article. This contradiction should have tipped us all off that the AvWeek article is not a serious analysis.

He then goes into a cost analysis and details of inflation compared to needed rises in NASA's budget.

A bigger question is: why do so many space cadets still worship Griffin and believe everything he says, without the normal level of skepticism directed at the statements and actions of political appointees? The answer is that Griffin is a master at divining what we want to hear and telling us exactly that. We are so accustomed to seeing bland organization men at the helm of NASA that we have been blinded by the sheer novelty of an Administrator who shares our romantic vision of space. We need to open our eyes and demand some hard-nosed rational planning to back up that vision.

ouch

Marsman · 2007-05-02 02:15:57

Mr Bell also has critics, I found one blog that nailed down quite a few issues which continue to come up here too, one being private Moon missions but I'll keep this in here for now -

If you happen to have been reading this blog for the last year or so, you may have noticed that I sometimes find myself at odds with Jeffrey Bell, the occasional opinion writer at Space Daily.com. Here’s a link to his latest column, but let me summarize it for you:
“Back in my day, we solved all these darned ‘Centennial Challenges’ but you young’uns are too thick to pay attention.”
Seriously, that’s a pretty accurate representation of what he’s saying. For those not familiar with Jeffrey Bell, his tagline is
Jeffrey F. Bell is a former space scientist and recovering pro-space activist.
That just about sums it all up right there. Nearly every single column he writes attacks the current new space movement from the tired perspective of “been there, done that”. But let me tell you something Mr. Bell, your generation of space activists and engineers did not actually succeed in getting us all into space!
You say that Armadillo Aerospace’s latest designs were fundamentally flawed, and looked like a cheap version of the test-bed lander Northrup Grumman used in the 60’s. Even if that were true, what do you expect? The people that engineered that craft have been retired for years, and their expertise was not passed on to the current generation because of terrible national space policies. The people at Armadillo are actually building something, which seems a whole lot more than the Milspace contractors are capable of these days.
Frankly, I’m a little tired of Mr. Bell’s curmudgeonly attitude and his disdain for this new.space, or alt.space, or Space Race 2.0 thing we are entering into. His dismissal of the recently completed Wirefly X-Prize cup as a replay of old black-and-white newsreels from Germany in the 1920s displays his lack of understanding about the goals of the X-Prize Cup. The Cup and the Rocket Racing League do not exist to advance technology, they exist to reignite the imaginations of the next generations of aerospace engineers whose designs will finally take us into space. The Cup and its participants do far more to get us closer to space than all of the back-of-the-envelope calculations ever done on the feasibility of orbital colonies or any other such topic.
I admit, Armadillo’s Pixel will not orbit a single paying customer, but the folks there are creating the knowledge and expertise to build something that will, and to do it affordably. This is a period of infancy of the new private space companies, and before than can replicate the successes of the past, they must learn those lessons anew. No amount of reading dusty, yellowed technical reports and published accounts can compare to the direct experience of building, trying, and failing.
This isn’t the 1960s and we don’t have the support of the nation as we once did. But this time, unlike then, we’re going to do it right. Companies will make money on sending people into space, and the profit motive will do more for space access than any amount of government funding ever did.
The experience of writers such as Mr. Bell could be valuable for the entire space activist and commercial space community, but he chooses to use his experience to “hoot derisively” at modern efforts. Much of his writing serves little purpose than to pad his ego about the superiority of his generation while completely ignoring the reality forced on us by the events of the intervening decades.
If the new space movement actually succeeds, I think Mr. Bell would be disappointed–or maybe not, after all what will it matter if we send people to the Moon on a privately financed mission? I can see the column now: “Hell, we did that back in the 60s and we brought guys back using only duct tape and a few old spare parts. You guys have computers with all that fancy design software, there’s no excuse not to be exploring the moons of Jupiter!”

http://www.anthonares.net/2006/10/jeffr … cause.html

My own opinion as far as Jeff's latest comments go is that he is probably correct this time and it is worth taking note of. The next 2 years will prove to be crucial to the whole outlook of VSE so it's good to hear some critical examinations of it from some sectors, even from Jeff Bell.

cIclops · 2007-05-02 02:45:10

Yes he's at it again.

The "three Apollo-scale projects" is a very misleading description. The proposed projects are not independent of each other, therefore they won't cost three times as much. The third project, the Mars mission, will use the Constellation system, just as the second project, the Lunar Outpost, will be built and serviced using the same Constellation system that in turn provides the transportation for the first project, Return to the Moon. Due to the enormous improvements in technology since Apollo, Constellation is expected to cost far less even though it will take longer because of the relatively smaller annual budget.

Yes it's right to question the economics, but any economic model covering the next 50 years is going to be questionable. Griffin's analysis was not intended to be precise but merely to show the ball park feasibility of the vision. Griffin's numbers are good enough for this exercise.

Where are these space cadets that worship Griffin hiding? Griffin gives speeches to many audiences, where are the reports of the new Griffin religion? Griffin appears to be a very hard nose administrator, one who also has a clue about the highly technical work he's responsible for - it's amazing that he has been able to basically shut down the Shuttle program and start a real replacement program.

"bland organization men at the helm of NASA" ? ... he surely can't have been referring to the last NASA administrator, showman Sean O'Keefe or even the one before, the "cheaper, faster, better" Dan Goldin ....

So what is Bell's point? Yes of course, he's at it again.

publiusr · 2007-05-04 16:12:42

He needs to go...away.

Yang Liwei Rocket · 2007-05-05 07:55:54

The next 2 years will prove to be crucial to the whole outlook of VSE

First there is too much politics in NASA and there are members of the Republican party like Richard Shelby and both Democratic leaders who are not happy with Griffin at the helm of NASA (I suspect these anti-Griffin Democrats and Republicans are just anti-Spaceflight period)
2 Big things need to happen for it to be clear sailing, if Griffin stay in charge at NASA with no more cuts, and if the next US President continues to support return to the Moon and putting people on Mars....then it's all clear sailing.
But those are two VERY BIG IFS

John Creighton · 2007-05-05 13:01:50

The Griffin Space Fantasy
NASA boss Mike Griffin says we can do three Apollo-scale projects over the next 50 years without increasing the NASA budget. It sounds too good to be true - and it is. Griffin's analysis of NASA's past relies on questionable economics and his vision of the future includes political and technical impossibilities.
Mr Bell has unfortunatly got a chance to have a good bite into what is rapidly becoming clear that NASA just does not have the money to actually accomplish what it has promised.
The March 14 2007 issue of Aviation Week contained an article by NASA Administrator Mike Griffin which apparently is the most detailed statement yet of his long-range plans. In this article and related press interviews, Griffin makes a case that NASA is not really as underfunded as many critics say, and that the US can afford three major space projects on the scale of Project Apollo over the next 50 years without major budget increases.
Specifically, he argues that a steady budget of about 14 billion FY2000 dollars per year can comfortably accommodate the Moon landing, Moon base, and Mars landing programs proposed by President Bush in February 2004.
There has been surprisingly little discussion of this key article. Possibly many space advocates suspect that the news is too good to be true. After all, on March 16, Griffin appeared in person on Capitol Hill to argue for a major increase in NASA funding of exactly the kind he had claimed was unnecessary in this article. This contradiction should have tipped us all off that the AvWeek article is not a serious analysis.
He then goes into a cost analysis and details of inflation compared to needed rises in NASA's budget.
A bigger question is: why do so many space cadets still worship Griffin and believe everything he says, without the normal level of skepticism directed at the statements and actions of political appointees? The answer is that Griffin is a master at divining what we want to hear and telling us exactly that. We are so accustomed to seeing bland organization men at the helm of NASA that we have been blinded by the sheer novelty of an Administrator who shares our romantic vision of space. We need to open our eyes and demand some hard-nosed rational planning to back up that vision.
ouch

Isn't the money there? Isn't the only question: how quickly can the new hardware be delivered?

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#1 2007-03-21 17:42:29

Re: Jeff Bell

#2 2007-03-22 02:24:33

Re: Jeff Bell

#3 2007-05-01 16:26:41

Re: Jeff Bell

#4 2007-05-02 02:15:57

Re: Jeff Bell

#5 2007-05-02 02:45:10

Re: Jeff Bell

#6 2007-05-04 16:12:42

Re: Jeff Bell

#7 2007-05-05 07:55:54

Re: Jeff Bell

#8 2007-05-05 13:01:50

Re: Jeff Bell

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