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Former NASA administrator hates Artemis, wants to party like it’s 2008 (arstechnica.com)

submitted 10 months ago by ylai@lemmy.ml to c/technology@lemmy.world

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[–] mozz@mbin.grits.dev 16 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (3 children)

I know nothing about any of this so take what I say with a grain of salt. That said, let's go over some of the history of Mike Griffin. I went to that article looking for the answer to the question of whether he was much involved with the clusterfuck that was the Shuttle program, which kept killing astronauts through its transparently-lax approach to safety. The answer turned out to be no, which is to his credit. But, what did he do?

[On] June 1, 2007, on NPR News' Morning Edition, Griffin said: "I have no doubt that global—that a trend of global warming exists. I am not sure that it is fair to say that it is a problem we must wrestle with. To assume that it is a problem is to assume that the state of Earth's climate today is the optimal climate, the best climate that we could have or ever have had and that we need to take steps to make sure that it doesn't change. First of all, I don't think it's within the power of human beings to assure that the climate does not change, as millions of years of history have shown, and second of all, I guess I would ask which human beings -where and when-are to be accorded the privilege of deciding that this particular climate that we have right here today, right now is the best climate for all other human beings. I think that's a rather arrogant position for people to take."

Griffin approved the launch of Space Shuttle Discovery for July 2006 to perform the second return-to-flight mission, overriding the NASA Chief Safety and Mission Assurance Officer, Bryan O'Connor. Although O'Connor said there were still unresolved concerns that foam insulation could break off of external fuel tank and damage the orbiter, Griffin characterized the risk as acceptable, arguing that it would be better to test one change at a time.

Griffin has been criticized by space research organizations such as NASA Ames Research Center life sciences group for shifting portions of NASA's budget from science to human spaceflight. Griffin had stated that he would not shift "one thin dime" of funding from science to human spaceflight, but less than six months later, in February 2006, after NASA Constellation funding did not reach requested levels, NASA revealed a budget that reduced space research funding by about 25%, including indefinite deferrals of planned programs such as the Jupiter Icy Moons Orbiter, the Terrestrial Planet Finder, and the Space Interferometry Mission. The logic was that funding Project Constellation, a presidentially mandated program, was the top priority of the space agency.

But:

Subsequent to the findings of the Augustine Committee in 2009 that the Constellation Program could not be executed without substantial increases in funding, on February 1, 2010, President Barack Obama proposed to cancel the program.

Nope, I'm sure of it... I hate him.

[–] PrincessLeiasCat@sh.itjust.works 8 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

The shuttle program was not a “clusuerfuck” that kept killing astronauts. There were 2 accidents, yes, which were obviously horrible tragedies, but the Shuttle program also built ISS and serviced Hubble so that it could keep doing amazing things.

Shuttle wasn’t perfect by any means, but it was pretty incredible, and because of it we’re still learning new things about everything from astronomy to biology to engineering.

But yes, Griffin is absolutely a piece of shit.

[–] mozz@mbin.grits.dev 6 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (2 children)

You're absolutely right. I need to be more precise. The shuttle era of NASA was absolutely brilliant scientists and engineers, doing groundbreaking work, supporting a corps of astronauts of unparalleled skill and courage, and all under a management team that was the most godawful bunch of fuckups and incompetents you could possibly imagine. Everyone knew that the shuttle was unsafe, and they kept flying it anyway, until it inevitably led to the totally unnecessary deaths of some astronauts, and then they kept at it under more or less the exact same methodology until it killed some more.

I still get goosebumps from some of the old Apollo-era legends like SCE to AUX or scratching marks in the window to compute the landing navigation by hand. The 1980s-era NASA administrators inherited a engineering organization that was basically able to do the impossible, and was the envy of the entire world, and they basically started running it with the mentality "as long as nothing went wrong this time it's not a problem. How can we get it a little cheaper or faster for the next one?"

Mike Mullane goes into a lot of good detail about it in "Riding Rockets." Basically, the nature of the program was such that all the astronauts knew it was just a matter of time until one of the shuttles malfunctioned in deadly and preventable fashion, and they wished it wasn't so but that was the bargain they made to be able to go to space. He said his only worry was that he'd do something dumb, or panic on the radio, and there would be this recording of him losing his shit that was his final legacy. He said as long as he could keep himself together if something did go wrong that would kill him, and he got to get to space, he was alright with that.

He was actually on one flight that would have blown up, absolutely guaranteed, but something else went wrong and they scrubbed the mission and all got back out of the shuttle and went home. They found the problem afterwards while they were refitting for the flight after that. But if they'd launched he'd be dead. He talks about his friends who did die in the accidents, and his anger and frustration at the management failures that led to them so inevitably. Space flight is dangerous anyway, but if you approach it without caution and respect, people die who don't need to. Some of them were his friends, and it's impossible to read him talking about it without getting angry at the system that made it that way.

So yeah, I was wrong in pointing the finger at NASA as a whole, you're 100% right. NASA management though can get fucked. I don't know if it's better now, but I'm pretty confident in saying that this particular guy is one of the fuckers who's part of the movement that was and is making it bad. So fuck him. As far as my brief Wikipedia research has led me is to conclude that he's a part of the problem.

Edit: https://spaceagechronicle.com/schirra-proved-astronauts-can-successfully-control-a-spacecraft/

[–] PrincessLeiasCat@sh.itjust.works 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I’ve read the book - it’s excellent and heartbreaking. The pendulum of safety swings back and forth - Columbia was 17 years after Challenger. Granted, we aren’t flying it anymore, but in terms of human spaceflight at NASA it’s been 21 years since Columbia. Everyone is hypervigilant and risk averse for a time as the lessons that were learned are still being discovered and people want to know how to avoid doing that thing again.

But over time, memories fade, people come and go, knowledge is lost and forgotten. And now with commercial space - “move fast and break things” if you will - they don’t like government or regulations or being told no.

So IMO, it’s just a matter of time until something else goes terribly wrong. For all of NASA’s faults, they did take the time to learn both culturally within the organization and technically (I can personally attest to this). They paused the program for a couple of years after both Shuttle accidents to learn how and why they failed.

That’s important and I’m not optimistic that those hoping to profit off of human spaceflight will be inclined to do the same when they fuck up.

[–] mozz@mbin.grits.dev 3 points 10 months ago

Yeah. I can't even remember what I was reading recently about how they were going to open up some new avenue of commercial space travel, and I remember thinking: Oh, so it's gonna be like Mt. Everest. You're gonna go and there are gonna be dead spacecraft with bodies inside, because they're not being careful enough for it to be rare that things go wrong. And you're just gonna go past 'em to get where you're going.

I'm not even necessarily saying it's a bad thing, as long as the people signing up know what they're getting into. But it's different from how I imagined it.

[–] PipedLinkBot@feddit.rocks 0 points 10 months ago

Here is an alternative Piped link(s):

SCE to AUX

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[–] wikibot@lemmy.world 4 points 10 months ago

Here's the summary for the wikipedia article you mentioned in your comment:

Michael Douglas Griffin (born November 1, 1949) is an American physicist and aerospace engineer who served as the Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering from 2018 to 2020. He previously served as Deputy of Technology for the Strategic Defense Initiative, and as Administrator of NASA from April 13, 2005, to January 20, 2009. As NASA Administrator Griffin oversaw such areas as private spaceflight, future human spaceflight to Mars, and the fate of the Hubble telescope. While he describes himself as a "simple aerospace engineer from a small town", Griffin has held several high-profile political appointments. In 2007 he was included in the TIME 100, the magazine's list of the 100 most influential people.

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[–] Buffaloaf@lemmy.world 2 points 10 months ago

Are you his Huckleberry?