"Better, Faster, Cheaper" May Have Claimed Another Satellite (NASA)

Space.com ^ | 08/19/2002 | Leonard David

[cogitator]

NASA/APL Hoping CONTOUR Will Send a Signal

While efforts to locate the lost in space Comet Nucleus Tour (CONTOUR) spacecraft continued through the weekend, speculation has begun on what may have thrown the mission awry.

Over the last several days, a series of telescope, radar and radio checks were conducted in search of the probe.

Hope now centers on CONTOUR's built-in smarts to cycle through and broadcast over a set of onboard antennas.

That sequence -- lasting several hours -- was pre-programmed to start 96 hours after CONTOUR received its last command. That could mean ground controllers might hear from the probe as early as 4:09 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time (EDT) this morning, or as late as 10:09 p.m. EDT.

Photographic evidence

Those searching for CONTOUR were aided August 16 by the Spacewatch Project in Tucson, Arizona. Telescope imagery showed two objects along a path close to CONTOUR’s predicted trajectory.

Mission operators "know where to look now," said Robert Farquhar, CONTOUR mission director from the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL).

"We aren’t sure that the spacecraft is completely gone, and that’s what we’re going to be working on over the next several days," APL's Farquhar said.

APL built CONTOUR and is managing the mission for NASA. Total cost of the project is $159 million.

Using its 34-meter antennas, NASA's Deep Space Network stations are scanning the spacecraft's expected path beyond Earth's orbit, hoping to pick up radio signals from CONTOUR's transmitters.

Educated guesswork

Meanwhile, educated guesswork as to what happened to CONTOUR has begun.

One focus for troubleshooters is the CONTOUR STAR 30BP solid-propellant rocket motor and its mating to a cylinder called the Spacecraft Payload Attach Fitting (SPAF). Both the motor and the SPAF have flanges with an identical bolt hole pattern. Several dozen of these holes are aligned to mate the motor to the SPAF.

CONTOUR's mating with the STAR 30BP motor took place at the Kennedy Space Center, with the motor resting upright in its support stand. CONTOUR was then lowered onto the solid propellant engine - with great care required to align the holes in the two flanges. Once the spacecraft was resting on the motor in the support stand, bolts that join the elements were installed.

The fact that Spacewatch imaged two pieces of CONTOUR may provide an important clue, according to SPACE.com sources.

One possible scenario -- admittedly conjecture at this time -- is that the back end of the solid rocket motor blew out and the second piece is the motor nozzle/igniter assembly. The rest of the spacecraft could be relatively intact, with CONTOUR, perhaps, having been protected by the SPAF cylinder structure.

Using the STAR 30BP solid rocket motor to boost CONTOUR beyond Earth's gravity was a cost-reduction decision. Some $10 million in overall mission costs were saved in contrast to a more costly system that would have shoved the probe directly after launch into deep space.

CONTOUR is one of the econo-class -- cheaper, better, faster -- type of craft in NASA's Discovery-class line of space science missions.

Last contact with CONTOUR

After circling Earth since July 3, CONTOUR fired up its STAR 30BP solid-propellant rocket motor, with ignition programmed to occur at 4:49 a.m. EDT on Aug 15. That rocket blast would nudge the probe out of Earth parking orbit and onto a trajectory to encounter two comets over the next four years.

The craft would have been spinning at 60 revolutions per minute as the 50-second engine burn kicked CONTOUR into a solar orbit, where it would later intercept comets Encke in November 2003 and Schwassmann-Wachmann 3 in June 2006.

Clearly, the rocket motor did fire. Space surveillance radar found no traces of new debris in Earth orbit, the leftovers if, indeed, the comet-bound spacecraft had exploded.

However, mums the word from CONTOUR.

As the hours since last contact with CONTOUR now stretches into days, spacecraft managers, engineers, and scientists are increasingly worried the probe is truly lost to space.

[cogitator]

IF the accident scenario described above is accurate, it certainly shows the value of spending an extra $10 million to help avoid losing a $159 million dollar mission, doesn't it?

Cost-cutting doesn't always cut costs.

[RightWhale]

Here is a mission that could have benefited from new tech, ion or plasma motors in particular. Solid boosters may be cheap and reliable, but they are relatively inefficient. Also the force applied by the solid motor on the rest of the spacecraft is relatively large. A cool, calm, sedate ride on an ion motor all the way out would have gotten CONTOUR where it needed to go, quicker, faster, better, and with more payload.

[Frank_Discussion]

Better... Faster... Cheaper... Pick 2 out of 3...

[Howie]

Reminds me of one that was launched a few years ago without all the software onboard, by the time the software was written and tested it was out of uploading range. I suppose that puppy is on the other side of creation by now. "Haste makes waste".

[pabianice]

"Better. Faster. Cheaper. Choose TWO..."

[John Jamieson]

"Worse, Slower, More Expensive",

won't solve the problem either.

EXNASA

[nightdriver]

"Engineers are treated like common tools as in a hammer or a screwdriver. When the job is finished just throw away the tools. It's cheaper right now. But much more expensive later."

I can identify with that. It's the story of my career.

Some then wonder why there seems to be a shortage of "qualified" engineers in the U.S. and they just HAVE to bring in more furriners. Who wants a sawtooth "career" like that anyway?

[Harrison Bergeron]

When I was a project manager, I had a sign on my office wall:

BETTER, FASTER, CHEAPER.

PICK ONE.

[cogitator]

"Worse, Slower, More Expensive", won't solve the problem either.

I think I'd prefer the three F's: "Faster, Finished, Functioning."

[Screaming_Gerbil]

On time. On Budget. On Mars. <- Pick Two.

---

NASA report: Software, tight budget doomed Mars lander

By Richard Stenger
CNN Interactive Staff Writer

March 28, 2000
Web posted at: 5:42 p.m. EST (2242 GMT)

WASHINGTON -- A software flaw probably caused the Mars Polar Lander to shut off its descent engines prematurely, sending it on a fatal plunge into the red planet, according to a report released Tuesday.

So goes the most likely scenario for the demise of the lander, according to Tom Young, a former Lockheed Martin executive who presented a NASA blue ribbon report on the fate of the $165 million spacecraft.

"Spurious signals were generated when the lander legs deployed during descent," Young said. "It gave a false indication that the lander (had) landed."

The malfunction would have happened when the lander was about 40 meters, or slightly more than 100 feet, above the surface. "It would have hit at 22 meters per second, or 50 miles per hour," he said.

If the lander had come that close to the red planet, "undoubtedly" this malfunction caused its destruction, Young told reporters. But no one could know for certain. The design of the lander prevented any communications as the spacecraft attempted to land.

Software fix was easy, cheap

Regardless of the cause, Young suggested, similar NASA missions should require more funding, better training and more computer program testing.

"There was inadequate software design and testing. The software should have been designed to prevent premature engine shutdown," he said. "In space, one strike and you're out."

There was a full-scale test of the suspect software before flight, but some touchdown sensors were incorrectly wired, Young said. After the wiring was corrected, the test was not repeated.

Had the defect been known, a software correction would have been simple and inexpensive, he said...

...He said the mission failures were regrettable, but not entirely unexpected, after NASA, faced with shrinking budgets, adopted a policy of "faster, better, cheaper," almost a decade ago.

"We said up front that this will be painful. We will be taking risks. We will be pushing the limits. We may lose two out of every 10 missions," he said.

But Weiler defended NASA's Mars missions, saying most have been successful and that ones in recent decades have gone aloft at a fraction of the cost of their predecessors...

(From:

http://www.cnn.com/2000/TECH/space/03/28/lander.report.03/)

[Harrison Bergeron]

"On time. On Budget. On Mars. <- Pick Two."

Thanks. I realized after I hit the POST button that is was "PICK TWO," not "PICK ONE." And the management principle holds as true as any law of physics, making it very obvious that the bean counters and squishy liberal arts types are in charge at NASA - not the engineers. Tragically wasteful.

[Cincinatus]

Better, Faster, Cheaper" May Have Claimed Another Satellite

There's nothing wrong with the "Faster, better, cheaper" paradigm per se; part of the cost of FBC is the acceptance of some failures. One should become concerned when the failure rate begins to exceed a reasonable amount -- in planetary exploration, say, greater than 20% or so.

One must remember the historical context for FBC -- in the 1980's, we had billion-dollar missions that failed (seemingly every time you turned around), not because of ill-luck as this one appears to be, but because of institutionalized incompetence (e.g., Hubble mirror flaw; the Galileo high-gain antenna). The thought was that by making missions "smaller" (focused missions with a few, carefully chosen instruments and no "Christmas tree"-ing of spacecraft with every instrument under the sun) and making them "faster" (small, lean organizations that flew missions, drawing board to data return, within ~3 years, as opposed to the decade-scale, mega-missions of the '80s), you made them "better" -- because you actually got data and science, instead of welfare for the engineering infrastructure of JPL.

FBC works. That was shown in the Clementine, Lunar Prospector, NEAR, and Pathfinder missions. Even if CONTOUR is lost, the management philosophy it was designed and built under has not been "discredited."

[hopespringseternal]

Hey, what's another hundred million in space junk?

With NASA throwing that kind of cash at the smallest, least significant projects, it is easy to see why no one has any interest in commercial space ventures. Why would they want to deal with people trying to make money with NASA dumping truckloads of cash at the drop of a hat.

[cogitator]

There's nothing wrong with the "Faster, better, cheaper" paradigm per se; part of the cost of FBC is the acceptance of some failures. One should become concerned when the failure rate begins to exceed a reasonable amount -- in planetary exploration, say, greater than 20% or so.

I agree with what you say above and with the rest of your post. The original reason for the title was to point out that spending just a bit more -- i.e., being a little less cheap -- might reduce the failure rate significantly. A possible failure scenario for CONTOUR fingers the solid rocket booster, and the articles indicate that the expenditure of an additional $10 million for a "direct to trajectory" launch (don't know what else to call it) might have avoided this particular failure scenario. Solid rocket boosts have blown up before - I remember a geostationary satellite released from the Space Shuttle that went boom a few years ago. The Mars Lander failure posted by another respondent also appears to be the result of spending just a bit too little to fix what turned out to be a mission-ending problem.

Funny you should mention the Galileo antenna: that failure may have been caused by the Challenger explosion and the subsequent shipping of the satellite prior to launch. The "stuck" rods of the antenna are believed to be the ones the the antenna weight rested on when the satellite was moved while waiting for a launch.

NASA’S GALILEO MISSION TRIUMPHS OVER ADVERSITY

So the problem (had it been found) could have been fixed with a couple dollars' worth of lubricant.