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From My Perspective: Post-Apollo Planning and Consequences

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From My Perspective: Post-Apollo Planning and Consequences From My Perspective: Post-Apollo Planning and Consequences A lot of what goes on in the world is in the eyes of the beholder. From where I have been and where I sat, I am very disappointed with our [NASA] progress over the past 30 or 40 years. Some people think the results have been great. I happen to think the results have not been very great. I will tell you that up front. I am not taking anything away from what has been accomplished. I would not downplay anything that was accomplished with the Shuttle, and I would not downplay the International Space Station. But when I compare it to what we had hoped to have accomplished by now—we have not achieved it. Post-Apollo Planning thinking gave careful consideration to the future. Plans included multiple capabilities to enable the nation to explore space with an affordable system—designed with a stable foundation and vital increments to take humans to low-Earth orbit and beyond, return to the Moon, and establish a realistic path to points beyond. Again, when I compare that plan to what we had hoped to have accomplished by now—we have not achieved it. If we want to have a productive space agency in the future, we should take time to look closely at the past three decades – since the launch of the Space Shuttle Program – and determine what should be examined to move us towards progress in the next years. If not, I believe the American people will find that NASA has no purpose and all the lessons we have learned and all the sacrifices that were made will be no more than words in history books written by those who did not live them. This narrative is a compilation from oral history interviews, dialogue from email correspondence, and conversations with a number of individuals who all have a common goal – to ensure NASA’s next journey is one that not only inspires future exploration, but achieves it. April 2016 From My Perspective Robert F. Thompson These pages are not just my opinion; however, I have offered it at several instances. These pages are a reflection of my experiences, research, discussions, and first-hand knowledge of events and the evolution of the nation’s space agency. I was there at the beginning, I helped to build the programs of historic technological achievements. Post-Apollo Planning at the NASA Johnson Space Center led to the development of a program with a Space Shuttle and the EVA Truss Space Station along with Shuttle C. The purpose: to evolve human spaceflight. Cost per pound was not on our design objective list; however, the objective was to operate within an allowance budget of 1% or less. The reasons for the Shuttle accidents, the transition of Space Station Freedom to the International Space Station, and the termination of the Shuttle Program helps to provide an accurate understanding of why the Post-Apollo plans changed – and how these events continue to impact the Agency, or how the results of the events should. Collecting history is a very positive thing to do, but unless someone puts it into some kind of productive conversation or lessons learned, it’s basically just history. I want to share what I can so those who design, develop, and implement this century’s space systems can succeed. The Appendix is a 22-page presentation shared on July 8, 2015, during a meeting of the South Western Aerospace Professional Representatives Association, a group of business development people from the different industry groups around the country, to talk about Post-Apollo planning and explain why the NASA Administrator was saying, “No Russia, No Space Station.” Basically, the consequences out of Post-Apollo planning are “No Russia, No Space Station.” References to the charts from that presentation are throughout the narrative. My appreciation to Jack Frassaanito for his assistance in creating the pages of information. Readers throughout the text will find bolded statements. These sentences are highlighted to emphasize specific messages and statements. April 2016 2 From My Perspective Robert F. Thompson From My Perspective: Post-Apollo Planning and Consequences Topics Post-Apollo from 1966 to 1972 6 Early Shuttle – Phase A & Phase B 23 Matrix Management (Shuttle Program Management) 37 Shuttle Accidents 50 Space Station Freedom 55 Changing the Plan 58 Cis-lunar opportunities 63 Misconceptions 71 Suggestions for NASA 74 Lessons to Remember 80 Shuttle History ? 95 Vision for a Space Transportation System 104 Conclusion 111 Frequently Asked Questions & Answers 116 Appendix Post-Apollo Planning, presentation, July 8, 2015 Von Karman Lecture: The Space Shuttle—Some Key Program Decisions, January 9-12, 1984 [AIAA-84-0574] Additional Information Bio Sheet Robert F. Thompson Notes transcribed from GWU – Columbia + 10 presentation Transcripts from Shuttle Related sessions, unedited Requested documents DVD from GWU program April 2016 3 From My Perspective Robert F. Thompson April 2016 4 From My Perspective Robert F. Thompson From My Perspective: Post-Apollo Planning and Consequences EVA Truss Space Station I’m going to start off by showing you a picture. It’s hung in my garage for 30 years. What this picture tells you is, “You are going to go to space and do something productive. You’re not just going to float through space or just go farther than anyone’s ever been.” That’s not very productive. Portugal worked hard in discovering the world, but today Portugal’s economy is not the biggest in the world. There’s nothing wrong with exploration, but NASA ought to be looking for more than exploration. Utilization, contributing to the economy, doing something productive is much more valuable than exploration. April 2016 5 From My Perspective Robert F. Thompson Post-Apollo from 1966 to 1972 I joined the Space Task Group in 1958 back at Langley [Research Center, Hampton, Virginia]. I joined at the invitation of the people setting up the Space Task Group. They asked me to set up the Recovery Operations. I worked from 1958 to 1966 doing that. In 1966 [Robert L.] Bob Gilruth [Director, Manned Spacecraft Center, Houston, Texas] called me in his office and asked me to leave Operations and become the Program Manager for what was being set up and called, Apollo Applications. My first question to him was, “Well, what’s going to happen to [Charles W.] Chuck Mathews?” He was the Gemini Project Manager and I would have thought he would just flip over and be the Apollo Applications Program Manager.” Gilruth had an answer. He said, “Chuck has agreed to go to Washington, DC, and do that for George [E.] Mueller. We would like you to take over the Gemini people and begin to work Apollo Applications.” So, we built a system from 1966 to 1972; we stumbled around for six years looking for Post-Apollo. When George Mueller first came in, we were in Gemini. He wanted to run things from Headquarters in Washington, DC. He wanted to run both the Program and the Operations. He didn’t want to run operations as part of the Program; he wanted to run them both. He set up an organization in DC called OSRO—Operations Support Requirements Office. He wanted everything of operational support brought to his office in Washington as requirements. His office would put them in a document, and he, George, would send them to the Pentagon. Anything the Defense Department was going to do to support us would come through him in Washington and he would control it. April 2016 6 From My Perspective Robert F. Thompson OSRO was run by a colleague of mine from Virginia Tech that I knew. OSRO in doing what George says set up a document about 18 inches wide. It had columns. Anything you want from DOD went somewhere in the big sheet of paper in a column, so George could keep up with it, well organized. I’m running Recovery [Operations] down here. I had set up an arrangement where I wrote our recovery requirements in the format the Department of Defense [DOD] wanted and in the wordage they wanted because DOD didn’t want me to tell them to put a ship here, and a ship there, and an airplane there. They wanted to know why they were there. So I’d tell them what time we wanted here, what capability we wanted here. Then they would place the ships and send the airplanes. Their job, not mine. Working fine. I could write this document, shoot it to DesFlot 4, the group in DOD, and they could cut an Op Order and an Op Plan, with all the ships, all the airplanes, all the people. We could go out and get the job done. I didn’t need Washington. All Washington needed to know was it was going on. Both the Pentagon and Headquarters. But no, George, he’s going to run it. When he said the requirements had to go up there and go through him, I cut a deal with DesFlot 4 and said, “They’ve thrown this bureaucratic *** in, I’m going to give you the requirements under the table at the time you need them to do your Op Order and Op Plan, and then we’ll just send them up there and they can do what they want to with them.” We went right on being on it, but I didn’t want to be doing that illegally. So I chose to go to the next OMSF [Office of Manned Space Flight] staff meeting; I had to go regularly and explain what I was doing with DOD.
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