2006 Conference on Small Satellites

Microspacecraft have always been one of my pet topics of interest. I am presenting a paper (co-written with Kris Winkler) on microspacecraft and NASA's Vision for Space Exploration at the 2006 AIAA/USU Conference on Small Satellites in Logan, UT. I'll post some highlights each day.

Day 1 (8/14/06)
Due largely to road construction delays, missed NASA Administrator Mike Griffin’s speech. Arrived in time for his Q and A.
The Q and A reported here is NOT verbatim, except where quote marks so indicate: they are as close as I can come to an accurate account, with some paraphrasing, written down shortly after the exchange.


Q: What is NASA doing about the S&T workforce?
A: This is not just a problem for NASA, but government-wide. I worry about it a lot, and we’re working on it, but it’s a government-wide problem.

Q (From Gil Moore, Project Starshine): I used to be able to tell students that, before they graduated in four years, they would be able to get their payload in space on a GAS can [Space Shuttle Getaway Special]. Now there is nothing they can use. Is NASA doing anything about it?
A: This isn’t NASA’s job. If universities want to work with the entrepreneurial community and get rides on their rockets, that’s great, but brokering those launches is not NASA’s job.

Q: Do you think the current NASA organization is right for the new missions, or does it need to be reorganized?
A: “If I thought it needed to be reorganized, I would reorganize it.”
We have made some changes, and now we have the four directorates, and I think that’s the right setup. We have decoupled the center directors from being program directors. We have the center directors as administrators responsible for the academic quality of their centers, but not for the programs. That’s how we did it in the Apollo days, and it worked pretty well, so I went back to it. It’s possible for an organization to be so confused that it gets in its own way, but I’ve never believed that an organization’s wiring diagram determines how effective it is. What determines how effective it is is the people.

Q: Who in NASA will perform future small satellite missions? We hear a lot in the media about Ames getting involved, especially for lunar missions. Will it be a center, or will it be based on mission?
A: We run them now as a competition, and I think that works pretty well. If an AO [NOTE: not sure of this term’s meaning] wants to get with an industry team, or a center, and they win the competition, then that’s who does it. I don’t try to steer those competitions in any direction.
I do need to get Ames back in the space business. We spend our budget the way Congress mandates it, and 16/17 of my budget is for space, but four of my ten centers, so 40% of the centers, are not in space. I’m devoting 40 percent of my centers to one seventeenth of my budget. That’s not workable...I need to get Ames and Langley and Glenn back in the space business.

Q: The greatest impediment to small satellite use is the high cost of launch. We can use Cubesats on Russian launchers, but we would rather launch in the United States and avoid the ITAR problems. What can NASA due to help?
A: Launch costs have always been the greatest impediment to doing anything in space. I hope the entrepreneurs can help us on this. I’ve bet a half-billion dollars over the next four years that they can do this. [NOTE: reference is to the Crew and Cargo Transportation Partners program for the ISS]. NASA is not able to solve this. NASA’s budget is completely taken up by things this Administration, prior administrations, and this Congress and past Congresses have mandated. We have no budget for this. I’d like to make investments in technology to reduce launch costs, but it’s not going to happen.