HOFFMAN: Good
afternoon, everyone.
So it looks like
we've pretty much
seated as much as possible.
So those of you on the side
will enjoy the show too.
So good afternoon,
I'm Jeff Hoffman,
Professor in the Aeronautics
and Astronautics Department
and Director of the
Massachusetts Space Grant
Consortium.
And as Director of the
Massachusetts Space Grant,
it's really my great pleasure
to welcome you all here today
to hear our Annual Space
Grant Distinguished Lecturer.
MIT is the leading institution
of the Massachusetts Space
Grant Consortium, which consists
of over a dozen colleges
and universities, as well as
research institutes, museums,
spanning the state from
Cape Cod to the Berkshires.
We're 1 of 52 national space
grant organizations supported
by NASA in every state, as well
as Washington DC and Puerto
Rico.
Space grant programs
vary according
to the needs of
individual cities,
but the overriding
purpose of space grant
is to encourage
students to participate
in space-related research and
pursue space-related careers,
to assist teachers in producing
space-related material
into their curriculum,
and to inform the public
about space-related activities.
And here in Massachusetts,
for example,
we provide fellowship
support for dozens
of students every
year, enabling them
to participate in summer
programs at NASA centers
as well as in space
research activities
at their own home institutions.
Together with the
Museum of Science,
every fall we put on a
Massachusetts Space Day,
where hundreds of
high school students
get to hear about the
research done by university
students sponsored
by Space Grant
and then listen to
a NASA astronaut
talk about spaceflight.
A longstanding tradition of
the Massachusetts Space Grant
is to invite a distinguished
lecturer to address
the public every spring.
Well, it's almost spring.
Anyway, in this
series, we've had
a Nobel Laureate,
several aerospace company
CEOs, a few NASA
associate administrators,
senior directors, astronauts,
and NASA chief scientists,
but never before a
NASA administrator,
as we have today.
Mike Griffin took over
the leadership of NASA
nearly one year ago.
You can read all about Dr.
Griffin's distinguished career
in the brochure that was
handed out as you came in.
And I'm not going
to repeat it here.
What was not in the
brochure is the fact
that Dr. Griffin does not
like to stand on ceremony.
And hence, Dr. Griffin
usually gives way
to a much more simple
and informal life.
And what was also
not in the brochure
is an insight into the
enormous challenges
that Mike has been
dealing with at NASA.
He's trying to lead our country
back to the Moon and beyond,
recreating the
capabilities that we once
had back in the time
of Apollo, but which
we allowed to disappear.
Now, most of you
students who are here
weren't even alive during
the Apollo program.
It's ancient history.
It's a heroic age.
But I know from speaking
with a lot of you
that the idea that you students
can now once again take part
personally in the human
exploration of the solar system
has spread incredible
excitement through your ranks.
Remember though, this time
we want the exploration to be
sustainable so that we don't
just go to the Moon a few times
and stop, but use it as a
stepping-off place to the rest
of the solar system.
And we have to do it with a
relatively constant budget,
not with a crash
program that was Apollo.
And while we're recreating
this capability,
we have to bring the shuttle
back to flight status
and operate it safely
for another five years
while we're completing
the construction
of the International
Space Station,
and hopefully service the Hubble
Space Telescope one last time,
and we have to do
our best to maintain
the science program that have
won NASA worldwide admiration.
Well, by any standards,
this is a tall order.
Maybe it's trying to put 10
gallons into a 5-gallon can,
but Mike has accepted this
challenge with determination
and with humility.
He's certainly is
uniquely qualified
to lead NASA into this
new era, with experience
in government, industry,
the military, and academia.
He's a true rocket scientist
and knows the space business
like few others.
He's brought about major
changes in NASA in just the one
year that he's been at the helm.
And we'll watch
with great interest
the continued evolution
of the agency.
Mike, I know you
give lots of talks
to many different
audiences, but I
doubt if you'll meet up
with an audience containing
as many absolute space
nuts as we have here today.
We're impressed by the
magnitude of the task ahead.
And we wish you success in
meeting these challenges.
MIT shares a very long and
proud history of cooperation
with NASA.
And we look forward
to working with you
to make the vision for
space exploration a reality.
We're delighted that
you've been able to come
to speak with us today.
And we look forward to
hearing what you have to say.
Ladies and gentlemen, let's
welcome the NASA administrator,
Mike Griffin.
[APPLAUSE]
GRIFFIN: Thank you.
Thanks, Jeff.
Raise your hand in the back
if you can hear me, somebody.
Great, thanks, worthwhile
to check that now and then.
Jeff, what time do we
need to be done by?
HOFFMAN: Well, we'll have a
cab waiting for you at 4:30.
It's only 10 past 3:00.
And we have time for questions.
GRIFFIN: So we're good.
Okay, great.
I just didn't--
HOFFMAN: I'll make sure
you [INAUDIBLE] time.
GRIFFIN: Sure, I just
didn't want to rush
if everyone had to be out, or--
HOFFMAN: [INAUDIBLE]
GRIFFIN: Good.
Thanks for the introduction.
That's way better than I
deserve by a whole lot.
I only have so much
distinguishedness to go in me.
And I have to save most
of it for Congress.
So you'll only get a little
bit of any distinguishedness
that I might have to go around.
I wanted to talk
with you all today
about our exploration
architecture,
how we intend to return to the
Moon, how it fits as we fast
forward to go to
Mars, a little bit
maybe in Q&A about
why it is, what it is.
I could almost say I'm here with
NASA, so read my view graphs,
but I'm not going
to read them to you.
I'm going to talk about what's
important about each one,
because they're going
to be on your website.
And you're going to
have those to read
more carefully yourselves.
And I've always
hated presentations
where somebody sat and
read the view graphs to me.
So with that,
let's step forward.
Why are we doing this?
As I've had occasion to
remark a couple of times
today to some students who
have asked the question,
you know, what is
all this about,
the vision for space
exploration comes
about, sadly, in the wake of
the loss of our second space
shuttle, Columbia, in flight,
and the realization on the part
of the Columbia Accident
Investigation Board
that what we do in spaceflight
is expensive, difficult,
and dangerous, but that it is
also strategic for the United
States in many different ways.
And we should not cease.
But if we're going to do it,
the goals of the enterprise
have to be worthy of the costs,
the risks, the difficulty.
We need loftier goals,
in Hal Gehman's words,
and that flying the shuttle to
the space station can, at most,
be a step along the way.
It is not the goal,
as it had been
for the last 30 years and more
in the American space program.
Most of that, and
in fact much more,
was captured in Chapter Nine
of the Columbia Accident
Investigation Board's report.
I think we are, as a nation,
indebted to Admiral Gehman
and the people who
assisted him in going
beyond the proximate cause
of the loss of the orbiter
and getting to deeper issues.
I think without that, I would
not be standing here today,
because the president listened.
His assistants in the
administration listened.
And they crafted a
far-reaching policy
for NASA that goes beyond
the shuttle, and the station,
and what we are doing today,
or in any given administration.
After the kind of discussion and
debate that you would expect--
and I was privileged
to be a part
of that debate as
someone outside NASA,
and therefore an expert witness.
Once I joined NASA,
my IQ went way down.
And I'm no longer
considered an expert.
But while I was
outside NASA, I was
privileged to be
part of that debate.
And after a year or
two of discussion,
this vision for
space exploration
for NASA and the
civil space program
was adopted by the Congress,
and in fact, hugely ratified.
It was adopted unanimously in
the final passage of the 2005
Space Act
Authorization for NASA,
in which it is
declared substantively
that the goals of
the US space program
are as you see them here.
We will finish
the Space Station.
We will use the
shuttle to do so.
We will retire the
shuttle in 2010.
We will develop a
replacement capability
to put humans in
orbit and beyond,
as well as cargo that
will substantially
replace the capabilities
of the space shuttle,
but in a different way.
We will return to the
Moon no later than 2020.
And we will work to
extend human presence
across the solar system.
In concert, we will implement
a sustained and affordable
balance between the human
and robotic program.
And we will use
all this to promote
international and
commercial participation.
Why do we do it?
For me, there are many reasons.
Some of them are captured
here on this slide.
The principal ones are captured.
But I will say that for
me, bullets one and two
are the most important.
The human curiosity that
leads to the desire to explore
is quite literally
wired into our DNA.
All of us here in North
America or in the Americas
are the descendants of people
who chose to leave their homes
and come here.
In fact, all of us who
aren't living in Africa
are the descendants
of people who
chose to come somewhere else.
It is wired into us.
And when humans could
only master the land,
that's what we did.
When we learned to master
the sea, that's what we did.
The 20th century was about
the conquest of the air.
It will be a while before we
can say that we have conquered
space, if we ever do,
so but it is something
that makes us what we are.
We can't afford to spend
a significant portion
of our national treasure
on it, but we spend some.
And I think we should.
We spend 0.7% of
our budget on it,
$0.15 for the average
person for every day.
I've said this several
times, because it usually
gets at least a chuckle,
but I spend more than that
on chewing gum.
And every time I hit a
golf ball into a lake,
I use up my month
of NASA's budget.
So we don't spend a lot
on space exploration,
but it is not an expenditure
that we should do without.
The second reason, of course,
is that, well, I am an American.
I am proud to be one.
I think that our nation is, and
should be, and should continue
to be a leader among nations.
I think the more opportunities
that we have to partner
with other nations, to create
allies rather than adversaries,
make our nation, make the human
species stronger and better.
Space exploration
affords us an opportunity
for benign cooperative
American leadership on a basis
that I believe, given
our stature in the world,
should be and should continue
to be a first among equals,
but recognizing that
we do have equals,
but that this is
something we want
to do and want to do together.
I think it strengthens
our nation,
strengthens our society,
strengthens the species.
And if there were no
other value that we
got from space exploration other
than the cooperative benefits
from working with other
nations in the world,
I believe it would justify
itself on those merits alone.
That's a personal
belief, but it is mine.
Why are we going
back to the Moon?
I get asked that question at
nearly every venue at which I
pop up.
And so I'll just
preemptively answer it.
We want to go to
Mars and beyond.
We've been to the Moon,
so why are we going back?
Well first of all, yes,
people have been to the Moon
for a cumulative time of
one man month on a landmass
the size of Africa.
I don't think that we can claim
to have explored the Moon.
I personally find the Moon
to be an interesting place
from a scientific
perspective, and especially
from an engineering
perspective in terms
of what we will learn to
do with it in learning
how to fly in space, and live
in space, and work off planet.
A long time ago, I believe
it was Craft Iraqi,
one of the Penamundi
pioneers who
said that, if God had
wanted us, had wanted man
to explore space, he would
have given us a moon.
He was tongue in cheek.
He knew we had a moon.
So I think it is important to
use that moon, both for what
may be there that we don't
know about, for what is there
that we do know about,
and for what we can learn
about living off planet before
we extend our reach further.
As I said earlier today and
have said in other venues,
before we can go
to Mars, we need
to learn how to assemble a
space-station-sized payload,
400, 500 metric tons
in low Earth orbit
without taking 15
years to do it.
We need to do it
in a few months.
And before we can
go to Mars, we need
to know how to seal a
crew inside a submarine,
tell them to push off and
not show their heads again
for two and a half years.
We can't do that today, not with
any certainty that they in fact
will come back alive.
And until we can do it, we
aren't ready to go to Mars.
We will learn to do it
by voyaging to the Moon
and living on the Moon.
And again, the Moon is
interesting of itself.
There are fundamental issues
of astronomy, physics,
astrobiology,
historical geology which
we may be able to settle
in utilizing the Moon.
What we've proposed
is an architecture--
and this was a discussion
about our space architecture.
What we've proposed
is an architecture
that, with as little fuss
and bother as possible,
and making use to
the maximum extent
that we could do it possibly
the things that we already owned
and creating the fewest new
things, does the following.
It meets our human
spaceflight goals.
It offers us a reasonably
significant advance over Apollo
in terms of crew time on
the Moon for the money.
It is sized to operate
with reasonable efficiency
at two lunar emissions per
year, six months apart,
sort of like a space
station crew rotation cycle,
but of course could do more.
It leaves behind
125-metric-ton launch capacity
for going to Mars.
And you'll appreciate that
if I need 400 or 500 tons
to go to Mars, that's four or
five launches of this vehicle,
even allowing for
some tare weight,
as opposed to how many dozen
space shuttle and Soyuz
and Progress launches to
build the space station--
a much better approach.
This is a much safer system.
The probabilities of loss
of crew are cited there.
It does meet our agreed upon
international obligations
for servicing the space station,
provides an orderly transition
to the shuttle workforce, and
can be bought by the yard,
allows us--
pardon me, allows
go-as-you-pay budget planning.
Lunar surface activities offer
us an early demonstration
of human exploration
beyond low Earth orbit.
We learn how to operate
away from the Earth,
but only three days from home.
I think no one will be surprised
if I say that there are things
about living off planet
that we don't yet
know despite having had
six voyages to the Moon 35
years ago.
I believe we should keep
our hubris in check,
recognizing that we need
to learn a few things.
We certainly can conduct
numerous scientific
investigations with the Moon
as a natural laboratory.
One of the most important things
in developing a more efficient
spaceflight architecture will
be learning to, in quotes,
"live off the land," in space
or on the planets and asteroids
that we visit.
In places, the lunar crust is
as much as 40% oxygen by weight.
It's at least 15% by weight most
everywhere that we've sampled.
And the oxygen is available
for human use by heating it up.
We need to learn how to do
that in an automated fashion,
because oxygen is 7/8 by weight
of the most efficient chemical
propulsion combination
we're going
to be using for a while, liquid
oxygen and liquid hydrogen.
So if you can-- and voyaging
to and from the Moon,
the mass fraction required
for propellant is about 50%.
So if 50% of your mass in
space is propellant and 7/8
of that is liquid oxygen that
you can get from the Moon
rather than hauling it up
from the surface of the Earth,
I would suggest that one of
the earliest economic returns
from utilizing the Moon
would be to generate and ship
liquid oxygen. It's going to
be a while before we learn how
to do it, but I think we will.
And of course, we
begin to establish
an Antarctic-style outpost
one mission at a time,
and also testing of the
techniques and technologies
that we're going to need to
go to Mars, and pass that.
Now, in contrast to Apollo, we
are planning an architecture
that offers global access,
because to scientists
and engineers both, the
polar regions of the Moon
offer some of the most
interesting sights,
whereas Apollo, as you
can see from this chart,
was restricted to the
near-equatorial band.
The far side, of course,
is also of interest.
One of the more interesting
places is near the lunar south
pole on the far side
in the Aitken basin,
where within close
proximity to one another,
there are sites for possible
lunar bases that have access
to 24-hour-a-day-- well,
full-time sunlight,
as well as to permanently
shadowed craters.
There is evidence from Lunar
Prospector and Clementine
of elevated quantities
of hydrogen.
And if we can find both
hydrogen and oxygen on the Moon,
then that will be the germ of
a truly valuable space economy.
We won't find it out
without going there.
And so some of our early plans
are focused on the Aitken base
and in Shackleton crater.
We will also need
many different things
besides merely
the transportation
to get to the Moon.
Power systems, communications,
rovers, habitat,
laboratory modules--
I'll talk a little
bit about those
in a moment in the context of
international and commercial
opportunities.
Let me review the
flight plan with you.
I think maybe many
of you here who
do have an interest in
space-- and if anybody does,
it's MIT students and faculty.
33 of your compatriots
have been NASA astronauts,
including my host today.
A good portion of you may
be looking at the hardware
that one day some
of you will fly.
So the flight plan starts
with a heavy lift launch
that allows us to take the Earth
departure stage and the lander
into low Earth orbit.
We're utilizing a combined
Earth orbit rendezvous and lunar
orbit rendezvous scheme.
For a variety of
reasons, it seemed to us
to come out ahead in the
architectural studies
that we did.
And following the heavy lifter,
if that gets to orbit safely,
we would launch the crew.
Crew docks, departs from Earth
orbit, flies to the Moon,
deploys into low Earth orbit,
leaves the crew exploration
behind without crew in at this
time, and lands on the Moon.
Once on the Moon, you do
what you're going to do,
eventually come home,
rendezvous, dock, return,
return to Earth-- nothing
magic here and not much
that you didn't see in Apollo.
One thing, as I say in
every venue in which I give
this demonstration, the
heavy lifter, and the crew
launch vehicle, and the
crew exploration vehicle
are probably pretty solid.
If you look at those,
you'll see the designs will
be flying in just a few years.
As I commented earlier to
my old friend Ed Crawley,
don't fall in love
with the lunar lander.
In fact, don't even
do any heavy dating,
because what the lunar
lander is at this point
is a weight allocation.
And we don't want
to commit too early
to what the systems designed
for the lander ought to be.
And in fact, I think Ed
and some of his students
are taking a look at that as
one independent body for us.
But the CEV, while
not very elegant,
offered a number of
advantages to us.
First of all, we ended
up deciding on the Apollo
shape, the outer mode lines.
We have an extensive
aero database on that.
The five and a half
meters there has since
been downsized to five meters
to make it fit within the--
well actually, there
were several issues.
One was the weight
margin that we
wanted to have with
the launch vehicle.
Another was if we have
to do a launch abort,
the five-and-a-half-meter base
diameter gave us a fairly large
projected area, which produced a
fair amount of aerodynamic drag
in getting off the
launch vehicle.
And in order to reduce
that to tolerable levels
that we could deal with
with an escape rocket,
we shrunk it from five
and a half to five meters.
But it still offers a quite
significant increase in volume
from Apollo.
We can carry six people to
low Earth orbit, per the terms
of NASA's Authorization Act.
So we can service the
space station, as required.
We can carry four to the Moon.
As part of a larger
mission, this
can serve as the vehicle
to get the crew up and back
at the start or end
of a Mars mission.
It offers us the
flexibility, the service--
we expect to have a design in
which the service module can
fly by itself with
unpressurized cargo
or operate in a
space tug capacity.
We are putting forward
a system that we
think has a pretty good
amount of flexibility
to do what we need to do with
getting people and medium
cargo up and down from space
for the next several decades.
And when I say several
decades, I think all of you
here appreciate that
aerospace systems generally,
from DC3s and B52s, to
Soyuz, and space shuttles,
and things like that,
expendable launch vehicles,
tend to have a very long
operational lifetime, decades.
They're expensive to
design, expensive to build,
expensive to keep up.
And we don't change
them rapidly.
So the designs you see for
crew and cargo heavy lift
are going to be the designs
that will take us to Mars.
Oops, pardon me.
One of our requirements
is that the CEV
must be capable of servicing
the space station, which
was one of the things that fell
out of our mixed lunar orbit
rendezvous and Earth
orbit rendezvous scheme.
With that scheme, of course,
the first step in any mission
to the Moon--
the first step is the
launch of the heavy cargo.
Provided that goes well,
we then launch the crew.
But the crucial thing is we
stage through low Earth orbit.
Well, if we're staging
through low Earth orbit,
the crew exploration vehicle
can go to the space station.
Or it can dock with the heavy
lifter in the lunar cargo.
How does it know the difference?
Like the old joke about
the thermos bottle, right--
it keeps hot stuff
hot, cold stuff cold.
How does it know the difference?
The CEV is basically
a vehicle designed
to fly from the surface of
the Earth into low Earth orbit
or into cis-lunar space.
That's what it does.
And whether it goes to the
station or goes to the Moon
is a matter of-- largely
indifferent matter
to the design.
So we can meet our
obligations in that vein
at no real additional--
in fact, we were
not able to find
any significant requirements
to serve the space station that
were not there in terms of going
to the Moon, much like Apollo.
Apollo serviced three
Skylab missions,
because a vehicle which
could fly to the Moon
could also fly to the Skylab.
The launch systems, of
course, are the real key
to the transportation.
They are of two stripes,
125-metric-ton heavy lifter
and a 25-metric-ton crew lifter.
By the way, the heavy
lifter is man rated.
And if one only wanted to
go to an equatorial region
for a particular reason,
then the heavy lifter
alone with the CEV on
top could get you there.
But if you want to go
to the polar regions,
you need more lifting capacity.
It will not be lost upon
you that these vehicles are
derived from shuttle systems.
The use of the shuttle
solid rocket booster
and external tanks is clear.
So there are two new
elements in our architecture,
an upper stage for the crew
launch vehicle and a CEV.
We will be doing
things like extending
the length of the external tank,
and quite possibly extending
the length of the
solid rocket boosters.
But fundamentally,
they are systems
we've already paid almost all
of the non-recurring engineering
development costs
in order to create.
And we're trying to make use
of them as we go forward.
I've basically said most of
the points on these charts.
The third bullet down
says that we're building
a new LOX-hydrogen upper stage.
And it says that we are
going to use a space shuttle
main engine.
And that's up in the air.
We might use the space
shuttle main engine.
We might use the Apollo-era
J-2 LOX-hydrogen engine,
because the shuttle main
engine requires development
to do an air start and is
a little big for the burn
out thrust, so we're considering
a couple of possibilities
there.
But the payload capacities
are in the range
that are indicated.
For the heavy lift
cargo vehicle,
we'll add a segment onto
the solid rocket boosters.
By the way, the five-segment
solid rocket booster
has, in fact,
already been tested.
The heavy lifter as such
can put 106 metric tons
to low Earth orbit by itself.
And if you add the Earth
departure stage for the lunar
capability, then you
can put 125 metric tons
in low Earth orbit, of which 55
metric tons can go to the Moon.
And of course, it's built out
of the same man-rated components
as we're using today, so it can
be used for crew if you want.
Earth departure stage
is the moral equivalent
of the Saturn S-IVB upper stage,
third stage used in the Apollo
era, a little bigger.
The Apollo-era model could carry
right around 50 metric tons
to the Moon, which was-- that
was the trans-lunar injection
mass on Apollo 17.
This will do about
55 metric tons.
So we pick up a little bit.
The extra is very nice to have.
I think I've already said
everything on this chart.
Lunar lander will deliver, in
their initial sizing, four crew
to the surface.
I have no doubt that more could
be packed in if one wished.
It does offer global access.
We are sizing the
whole thing to be
able to land 21 metric tons
dry weight, net of fuel,
to get down.
And that's-- as I
commented earlier,
don't fall in love
with the configuration.
The real thing you
want to know is
that the architecture will let
you land 20 plus metric tons.
We want to figure out the
lander design that utilizes that
in the maximally efficient way.
Early on, we're planning on for
an ascent and a decent stage.
And so we want the ascent stage
to be as small as possible,
because it truly
must be thrown away,
whereas the descent
stage will be left behind
and should be designed or
designable in such a way
as to offer a lot of leave
behind in terms of building up
a lunar base,
because we're never
going to find any
resources on the Moon
more valuable than the
tanks, and the metal,
and the electronics that we
take down with us in the descent
stage.
So we are thinking
about those things.
In the slightly longer run, we
want the lunar lander ascent
and descent stage to be one
stage, and to be reusable,
because we want to park
it either on the surface
or in low lunar
orbit, and refuel it
either from in situ resources
developed on the Moon
or from a fuel that is
shipped out from Earth.
But we don't need to
bring a lander every time.
We should think
about bringing fuel,
if we have to bring anything.
So we're not ready to commit
yet to the design of the lander,
but this is one concept.
Earlier on in the
bottom bullet, we
were thinking about LOX-methane
for the ascent stage
propulsion, because there is
good transferability of that
to the Mars ascent stage because
Bob Zubrin and others have
investigated the utility
of extracting methane
propellant from the
Martian atmosphere
in a catalytic
reaction that uses
only a little bit of hydrogen.
And that's a neat thing.
And we may well do it.
There are also other in
situ resource extraction
possibilities for Mars.
So I don't think we're ready
to commit to LOX-methane,
but in any case,
we were planning
on using it for the ascent
stage of the lunar vehicle,
and removed it
from consideration,
because early on,
the development cost
was going to be quite high.
And when we looked
at it, it didn't
offer any payload
advantage for the Moon.
And doing something
now for Mars that
doesn't offer a payload
advantage for the Moon didn't
seem to be a fiscally
appropriate thing to do,
so we will drop back to another
propellant combination, maybe
LOX-ethanol, possibly
hypergolics for lunar ascent.
There are a number of
commercial opportunities.
And we want to avail ourselves
everywhere we can of the option
of purchasing services
and goods on a commercial
arm's-length transaction basis.
It is in that fashion that we
might have some opportunity
to help create a true space
economy rather than having
everything we do be the result
of a government prime contract.
We intend to purchase launch
services and communication
services as soon as
they're available.
And in fact, I think all of you
know that we have allocated--
I hope the Congress sustains.
We have allocated a half billion
dollars over the next five
years to help
serve as seed money
for entrepreneurial
or even larger
firms who choose to
invest in creating a truly
commercial cargo and
crew carrying capability
to be able to service
the space station.
The space station
logistics market
is a market that we are
willing to, and in fact,
eager to turn over to
industry because we believe
that it is incontrovertibly true
that, if something can be done
by industry at all,
it can be done cheaper
than having the
government do it,
most estimates would say
at least a factor of five
or six times cheaper.
And we'd like to be able
to take advantage of that,
so we're trying to
help bring it about.
But as we move
forward to the Moon,
there are rovers to be built,
power supplies to be emplaced,
communications
systems to be orbited
around the Moon, navigation
systems to be put in place.
There are a lot of services and
goods that we believe we can
contract with industry to
supply on an arm's-length basis
and where they might be able to
sell residual services to other
enterprises.
We hope that can come about.
Similarly, there are
many opportunities,
some of the same opportunities
for international cooperation,
where other nations can elect
to participate with us in going
to the Moon so that, in exchange
for a seat in the lunar lander,
maybe they help to build
and emplace a habitat.
Maybe they help to provide
communications, or a rover,
or power supplies, or an
automated cargo lander, or, or,
or, or.
We have tried within NASA to
offer an architecture that
does a couple of things.
First of all, it
does the minimum
necessary to meet the
presidentially stated
and congressionally
approved objectives.
It does not do more.
I think we do not want
to return to the day
where NASA was going
to just do everything.
We designed an
architecture which
does what we were told
to do, does not do more,
but leaves an awful lot of
places, a lot of interfaces,
a lot of hooks and scars
where either other nations
or commercial
enterprises can join in
to make it grow from a slender
reed to a branching tree.
The architecture, however,
that we've advanced
does the crucial thing
that only, in this era,
only the government can do,
and only the United States
government can do.
And that is provide robust,
we believe, safe and reliable
transportation for a significant
number of people to low Earth
orbit and then take
them on to the Moon.
That is the crucial
step with which
we believe an international
program can be forged,
and without which
nothing can happen.
And we believe
that, in this era,
only the United
States can do it.
And so that's the path
that NASA will do.
This is a chart for
budget geeks that
says our plan fits within,
at least in the near term,
fits within the budget profile
we've been told to expect.
This is the chart that
is sort of my semi
get off the stage
chart, but captures
what I started out by saying.
And this is a couple
of quotes from me
that, again, [INAUDIBLE]
people abstracted
from speeches I gave and
put into the presentation.
So I will let you
read them later.
And this is a quote
from Gene Cernan,
which I think is hard to
read without a certain sense
of humility.
I believe that great
nations do indeed
do great and ambitious things,
and that this is something
that the United
States must do to be
a great nation and a Great
Society in the 21st century
and beyond.
And that's why I took the job.
Thank you for your
time and attention.
I'm yours for questions
and for 50 minutes,
according to Jeff's schedule.
[APPLAUSE]
HOFFMAN: We have
a microphone here
which we can pass
around so everybody will
be able to hear the questions.
So start raising your hand.
And we'll try to
get things going.
GRIFFIN: Yes?
AUDIENCE: Is it on-- yeah.
So thank you very much.
This was very good.
I'm with the MathWorks in
the Natick, Massachusetts.
And of course, I have a question
about the design process.
I read somewhere that you are
taking a different approach
to design than the traditional
spiral-based approach.
You want to have a much
more direct approach
to designing the systems that
will eventually take us back
to the Moon.
Could you elaborate on
that a little bit, how
you think to achieve that, in
particular just to contrast it?
If you look at the Joint
Strike Fighter program,
they took a deliberately
spiral-based approach.
And you chose another.
Is there a particular
reason for that?
So I guess there
is two questions.
GRIFFIN: Well, other than the
fact that the GAO published
a report saying that the Joint
Strike Fighter was overweight,
underpowered, short-legged, and
couldn't carry much weaponry--
that's just the kind of
program I want to emulate.
Spiral development is a
term that to my knowledge--
and I might well be
wrong-- originated
in the software world, where
one does a continual iteration
between capabilities
and requirements
to grow them ever
greater and has been
used in the acquisition world.
And the buzz word may have gone
in the other direction for all
I really know-- and has been
used in the DOD acquisition
world.
You know, I think that's a
fine approach when you're
talking about production
systems or systems
that you're designing
to go into production,
where you'll have a lot
of units, a lot of users,
and expect to have a long-term
evolution of requirements.
I would like to get to a
point in the space business
where we have enough demand,
and are producing enough units
with enough different
and growing requirements,
to be able to say that I
thought a spiral development
acquisition approach
would be useful.
It was my judgment
that the space business
for the next couple
of decades will not
be that type of business.
And it was, frankly,
my judgment that we
would be lucky to get one
spiral, that what we should do
is build a system that
will meet the stated
objectives in the simplest and
most direct manner possible,
using as much as possible the
heritage from components which
had already been
developed and paid for.
And if we absolutely
had no other choice,
develop some new thing.
There is a Japanese phrase,
the nail that sticks out
is hammered down, that I
learned from my roommate
in college a million years ago.
And there are times when you
want to take a bold new step,
and times when maybe you
don't want to attract quite so
much attention to yourself.
We are trying to re-vector
the human spaceflight
program of the United
States from one
which has been focused on low
Earth orbit for the last 30
years to going to
the Moon and beyond.
And I chose not to put
any developmental--
I've got enough political
hurdles and enough mental
hurdles in changing
the paradigm of what
we do with civil
spaceflight in this nation.
I did not want to have
developmental hurdles.
Now, I've spent years doing
one new thing after another.
I would love nothing more than
new developmental challenges.
I can't resist, at heart,
being a system engineer.
It's what I was born to do.
But I restrained
myself, because we
have other problems right now.
So that's why it looks
the way it looks.
Miss in the front
row, the red whatever?
[LAUGHTER]
I don't know if it was
a sweater, or a skirt,
or a blouse.
I can't see that
well from back here.
AUDIENCE: Has NASA
been considering
low level development
of the Atlas or Delta,
not as a primary CEV
carrier, but as a backup
to the shuttle drive to
assure human access to space?
GRIFFIN: Well, the five-meter
diameter of the CEV
allows it to fit nicely on an
EELV, an Evolved Expendable
Launch Vehicle, the
Atlas or the Delta, just
from a fit point of view.
The EELVs would
have to grow a bit
to accommodate a
fully fueled CEV.
Their capability to the
orbits that we need to go to
is in the neighborhood of
20 metric tons or less.
I don't know that we can
get a CEV down that low.
Let me let me just
remind everybody who--
that the Apollo system, carrying
only three people to the Moon,
was a 30-metric-ton
vehicle, right on the nose.
Technology has moved on.
Structures have gotten lighter.
Electronics doesn't weigh
so much, da, da, da, da, da.
But getting a fully fueled and
loaded CEV down to a weight
that the EELV can carry,
probably something we can't do.
So the EELV is
going to maybe have
to add another E in front of it
for Evolved Evolved Expendable
Launch Vehicle before it
could be really useful for us.
They may very well do that.
And some of the hardest things
to change are things like--
that would be conceptually
the simplest, like the base
diameter.
So our vehicle envelope
is compatible with theirs,
but at present, there
is not a direct utility
of the EELV family for
a crew launch backup,
not to say that
there could not be.
And we're open to that
possibility later on.
There are some
other issues there.
The EELVs don't offer a
very robust abort strategy.
The trajectories that
they fly are rather
lofted for efficiency.
If I were-- and I used to
do-- designing trajectories,
I would want a more
lofted trajectory also,
but then that makes
a very high G load
in getting off the vehicle
at certain points in flight.
And we really would rather not
kill crew if we could avoid it.
And sometimes launch
vehicles will fail.
In fact, 1 in 50 times or so,
launch vehicles will fail.
So you have to assume
that they will fail.
And you have to
have a robust abort.
The EELV in its present
form would not provide that.
EELVs today are not man-rated.
I mean, the Air Force would
be the first to tell you that.
Why should they man rate them?
We would have to spend
a good amount of money
to man rate the vehicles.
And the Air Force is not
going to do that for free.
If we man rate the
vehicles, we either
have to have two production
lines, which there isn't
a sane production engineer
in the world who wants to do,
or everybody is going to have
to buy a man-rated vehicle even
for an unmanned launch, which
of course addresses the DOD
requirements.
They will not be real fond of
paying the extra bill required
to buy copies of a
man-rated launch vehicle
because we needed
it to be man rated.
So as a backup or
emergency capability,
sure, I'd like to reach a state
where one day we could do that.
I really would.
But as a thing that
you do routinely,
there are considerably--
there are sound reasons of
programatics and fiscal policy
that would argue to keep
those lines separate.
And that was the
argument that we made
in crafting this architecture.
And it was, believe
me, fully accepted,
because people
below the top line
do kind of understand that
there are these differences.
And then after we
got it all done
and got approval for
this architecture,
some of the senior ranking
Air Force guys to me
and said, thanks, thanks a lot.
We really don't want you messing
around in our production line.
You'd be stupid to use the EELV.
And so we said, okay.
Now, we may very well use
it for cargo deployment.
In fact, I would hope to.
But as a crew
carrier, it's not--
I'm not saying it can't work.
And if you spend money on
it, you can make it work.
I mean, you can
make anything work.
But as it is today, it's
not that well-suited.
Did I answer your question?
AUDIENCE: Yes, thank you.
GRIFFIN: Okay-- there
is an awful lot of stuff
that goes into these
engineering trades.
You know, it's just
really annoying.
In the back?
AUDIENCE: This whole
exploration of Moon and Mars
is wonderful, commendable,
and expensive,
as is the National
Space Station,
as is the space shuttle.
And I'm happy to give you my
$0.30 instead of $0.15 to pay
for this, but most
of the nation is not.
And so you have
been moving forward
with this within somewhat
of a static budget,
meaning there are concomitant
reductions in other
of NASA's operations.
And I'm wondering, what are
the painful cuts that you need
to approve in order to do
this within a static budget,
and in particular, the ones
about the Earth monitoring
over the next century?
GRIFFIN: Well Earth monitoring
is a NOAA responsibility, not
a NASA responsibility.
We helped develop
the technology,
but we don't pay for the
Earth monitoring systems,
by and large, unless
they're research activities.
And the Earth Science
program is something
I'm happy to say where
I have restored budget
since returning to NASA
rather than taking it away.
And you can look at
the record on that.
Your statement is
obviously pejorative.
But I will try not to
address it in that manner.
The money that we're spending
on NASA probably will not go up
and probably will not
go substantially down,
because there are political
objectives and goals that
go well above my
head that would act
to keep it from going
up substantially or down
substantially.
And the science program at
NASA is valued for itself
and will not go substantially
up or substantially down.
I would argue that the next--
that actually, the highest
priority would be to restore
some help to aeronautics,
but the aeronautics
budget is not currently
as robust as I
would like it to be,
entirely apart from any
considerations of space
exploration, but having to do
with other policy objectives.
So the net of that
statement is that we
spend a certain amount of
money on human spaceflight
in the country,
and probably will
continue to do so,
because the NASA
top line in constant
dollars isn't
going to get altered a lot, and
neither is the science portion.
So the vision for space
exploration is largely about,
what do we do with the money
we spend on human spaceflight?
I and many others
believe it is strategic
and that it is important to
the United States to do it.
Many disagree.
I fully understand that.
But the argument
is that, if we are
going to spend this money
on human spaceflight,
then exploring space
beyond low Earth orbit
is a more productive, more
strategic, more important
use of the money than is
remaining in Earth orbit
and being confined
to the space station.
I must disagree with
your assertion that
seemed to me to say
that most people did not
support these objectives.
I actually was a
little bit surprised,
but the Gallup folks
ran a poll in December
that I thought was
unusually well-worded.
They got beyond the usual
rather coarse policy
sampling that yields a
rather ambiguous answer.
And they phrased the question
in the following way.
Given that the budget for
four NASA remains less than 1%
of the federal budget-- and
currently we're at 0.7%.
Given that it remains
at less than 1%,
do you strongly support,
support, are indifferent about,
are mildly against,
or strongly against--
and then they listed the goals
of the vision for exploration,
return to the Moon,
go to Mars, all that.
75% of the population either
supported or strongly supported
those goals given
the precondition.
And actually, it was about 77%.
I'm rounding down.
And the spectrum of approval
was gender-indifferent and
political-party-indifferent
to within the accuracy
of the sampling.
So when people
understand, most people--
I would offer from
informal sampling,
that when I just talked
to casual observers,
most people believe
that the space
program uses an amount of money
somewhat comparable to DOD.
It's amazing how,
you talk to people,
they'll say-- you know, what
do you think we get at NASA?
And they say, oh, what
half of what DOD gets?
And I tell them 4%.
And they're stunned.
I tell them that we spend less
than 1% of the budget on NASA,
and they think
it's pocket change.
It's not an issue for them.
So given that the amount
of money being spent
is not an issue, the
issue then becomes
what do you think the
productive use of that money is?
And I believe, or I would
not have taken this job,
that the proposed effort
is a more sensible use
of the money than other
efforts upon which
we have been engaged.
And that's the
best answer that I
can give you as to what we're
doing and why we are doing it.
In the middle, you
were the first one.
AUDIENCE: Hi, I won't
use the microphone.
So thank you for
coming this afternoon.
I am a former employee of
NASA Headquarters in DC.
GRIFFIN: I'm sorry for you.
[APPLAUSE]
AUDIENCE: But now I'm broke
because I'm an MBA student.
But my question
has to do with some
of the newest
explorations of space
coming from the private sector.
Some of the more interesting
and novel approaches
of exploring space comes
from private money,
such as the X
Award, and also some
of the other groups
that are encouraging
some of private groups
to explore space.
How do you regard some of
these private groups that
are exploring space?
Do you look at them more
as a possible competitor?
Are they taking away from
some of the shuttle--
some of the launch
windows or some
of the financial incentives
that you provide in the future?
Or also, do you regard
these groups from more
of a collaboration standpoint?
Can you use some of their
low-budget techniques
in coming to space
in terms of working
with them in the future?
GRIFFIN: If only because
I'm getting to an age
where I can no longer remember
really long questions,
I hope we can get shorter
questions in the future.
But I think the essence
of your question
was, how do we regard--
what do I think of
and how do I regard
commercial enterprises,
and you know, with
the precondition
that they're more innovative?
Yes, they are.
And I'm desperately
hoping that they succeed,
which is why I've
advocated and am advocating
for a half-billion-dollar
allocation of NASA money
to help seed those enterprises
in the next few years.
By and large, the innovative
commercial enterprises
that have been
offered up so far--
I made this comment
earlier in visiting
with some of the students--
are mostly pretty
view graphs and loud
mouths, which is fine.
Any good idea actually is
going to start with that.
And the question remains as
to which of the entrepreneurs
can turn pretty view graphs
into pretty hardware.
I hope at least a couple do.
And we are trying to
provide that seed money.
I recognize that
NASA has a reputation
in the past of trying to stifle
commercial initiatives as
if they were competitors.
That is wrong and wrongheaded.
It is against the policy
of the US government
since the Eisenhower
years to allow government
to compete with what can
be offered commercially.
In my view, when you use
the term "exploring space"
to refer to putting humans in
orbit, you may be accurate,
but that's unfortunate.
Putting a human into
orbit was exploring space
when John Glenn did
it the first time.
If we had conducted our space
program properly and properly
involved industry
as early as we could
rather than as late as we
could, putting people into space
would be a routine
activity that companies
could do without our help
and without our involvement,
and we could merely
buy tickets, which
is not to say that the
government wouldn't
have its own systems.
I mean, the government finds
it advantageous to buy me
a ticket on United
Airlines to come up here.
And the government finds
it advantageous to maintain
military airlift capability
to move its folks around.
And they manage to co-exist
quite successfully.
So I believe being at either
end of the spectrum is wrong.
And we've been operating in
NASA as a strictly government
enterprise for moving people and
things around for far too long.
So I'm doing everything
I can to sponsor
the development of truly
commercial capability
over the next few years.
Now, it's a chicken
and egg thing.
I said, I'm putting
half a billion in it.
Why don't I put more in?
Some of the
entrepreneurs want me
to put in more, starting
with the presumption
that any money we spend in
the government is wasted.
If we would only give it to
them, we would get good value.
Well, guess what?
The taxpayers are not fond of
betting large amounts of money.
The Congress will not
approve speculating
with large amounts
of money on a gamble
that a supplier may
or may not show up.
We have a space
station to sustain.
We want to return to the Moon.
We have to conduct our
affairs in such a way
that, when we spend money,
we definitely get a product.
I can't fail to accomplish
the stated mission
because I bet on an entrepreneur
who might or might not
be there.
So I'm treading a fine line
between not doing anything
to help the entrepreneurs and
risking the non-accomplishment
of my stated mission because
I trusted entrepreneurs
who turned out not to be there.
It's a difficult path to walk.
And I'm trying to
walk it, because I'm
convinced that if the government
can't provide some seed
funding, and frankly,
some seed demand,
that we won't be able to
leverage this economy.
For example, I cannot,
looking back historically,
I cannot imagine the development
of the American West without
the government-sponsored
transcontinental railroads.
I cannot imagine that
that would have happened.
We would have always been--
we would not have developed
the West with wagon
trains and mountain men.
The development of
the American West
began in the last third
of the 19th century
after the railroads were there.
So there is a role for
government in helping
to seed private enterprise.
And I want to do that
desperately, and frankly,
looking for ideas.
So I hope some of
these folks that you
mentioned can get to the next
stage beyond view graphs.
Pam?
AUDIENCE: Thanks for
coming here today.
[INAUDIBLE] research
scientist here at MIT.
And I've had over a decade of
very nice funding from NASA,
however, recently we had
catastrophic unprecedented cuts
in our ongoing projects.
And so my question
is, does NASA envision
re-establishing funding in
medical and cell science
researches?
GRIFFIN: Eventually,
yes, but let
me pose to you the
following dilemma.
HOFFMAN: In fact, can
you repeat the question?
GRIFFIN: Oh, I'm sorry.
The question was, her life
science research has been cut.
And what do I plan
to do about it?
[LAUGHTER]
Oh, well I mean, that's the
net of the question, sorry.
And the answer is,
right now, nothing,
because I'm responsible for
trying to complete the space
station according to a
longstanding and highly
interlocking set of
international agreements
that we have, I think,
appropriately chosen
to say we will honor.
I'm trying to fly out the
shuttle and retire it in 2010.
I'm trying to
build a new system,
have NASA build through
its prime contractors
and new system to replace the
shuttle's capabilities, trying
to keep the overall space
science program as intact as I
can and not further
hurt aeronautics.
Life science research
for NASA is not
the only life science research
in the nation, by any means.
In fact, we're not
even the primary user.
Life science research at
NASA has the sole purpose
of trying to figure out what's
going to happen to human beings
when we put them in space.
Well, I don't have any
interest in finding out
what happens to human beings
when I put them in space if I
can't put them in space.
And I'm not being
cavalier about that,
although it sounds that way.
It's just because I
get the question a lot.
So I have a limited
budget, a lot
of requirements on the
plate, and the necessity
of making some very
hard choices, which
involve cutting some things
I would very much like to do,
because I think the
priority order has
to be to restore, for the United
States, a set of capabilities
that we once had, that
we allowed to atrophy,
that we now wish we had
not allowed to atrophy,
and that we must recreate.
And I need more money
than I've got to do that.
And so unfortunately, for
the next four or five years,
most of the research
activities you
have come to know and love from
NASA are going to be reduced.
Now, we had proposed some
cuts in research and analysis
in our purely space
science budget,
which would not help this lady.
And we may actually decide
to cut emission and restore
some of the R&A
money, because I'm
very aware of the frustration
among the scientists
at losing graduate student
support, and things like that.
I've been a graduate student.
We may rethink that.
We can do that.
But broadly speaking,
I just don't
see an opportunity for
much life science research
within NASA for the
next five or six years.
I just am out of money.
I wish I could give
you a better answer.
On the left, I haven't had
any attention over there.
AUDIENCE: I'm wondering
if you could walk us
through the airlock decision.
GRIFFIN: What airlock
decision do you refer to?
AUDIENCE: I think I heard there
was a [INAUDIBLE] appliances
that the airlock [INAUDIBLE].
And so I was wondering if you
could walk us through that.
GRIFFIN: Okay, the--
I mean, even
high-level requirements
can always be scrubbed.
As I've pointed
out several times,
the lunar lander is
not designed yet.
But in our thinking is,
yes, the requirement
for an airlock for
the following reasons.
If people are going
to go to the Moon
and stay for more
than three days,
if they're going to
stay for a week or weeks
at a time, which the system
is capable of supporting,
they of course need to
have a relatively habitable
environment in which to live.
Lunar dust is-- the more we
study it, the more harmful
we understand that it is.
It's basically finely blasted
rock which is quite sharp
and we think quite
toxic to humans.
So we don't want lunar
dust cluttering up
the actual habitation space.
I phrased this inappropriately.
We want as little
lunar dust as possible
cluttering up the
habitation space.
If we drag suited crew members
into an area of the lander
or any of the other
lunar habitat things,
then we will inevitably have
a huge amount of dust there.
And it will be problematic.
Now, if you knew
that you were only
going to use the lunar lander
to land, and get out of it,
and not get back in it until
you were coming back home
or coming up to orbit
for a rendezvous
and definitely had another
hibernation module,
then you wouldn't need the
lunar lock and the lander.
And you could put
it and hab module.
I'm trying to look out 15
or more years in the future
and guess whether there is
enough money in the program
to guarantee that I'll have
a lander plus a habitat.
And I can't guarantee that.
At least, I don't think I can.
And so it's a little bit of a
suspenders-and-belt approach.
If I've got to live out
of the lander for a while,
then I want an airlock.
That's the thinking.
I don't think I'm Moses
with a set of stone tablets
that I carried down
from the mount.
I look in my closet every day to
see if those tablets are there
telling me what to do.
And they weren't
there this morning.
So you know, some of-- a lot
of this is human judgment.
But yeah, I'm the
guy that said there
has gotta be an airlock, because
there was a lot of dispute
about that on our team.
At some point, somebody
has got to make a decision.
So I said, there
shall be an airlock.
And those are the reasons why.
[LAUGHTER]
I mean, sometimes it
comes to that, you know?
The toughest decisions
are the 55% 45%
percent kind of decisions.
And nothing ever comes
to the boss that's easy,
or somebody else
would have done it.
So that was the thinking.
Way in the back on the left?
AUDIENCE: Yeah, I was
wondering if you could comment
on [INAUDIBLE]
obvious [INAUDIBLE]
that there is a lot of
economic and technical reasons
to put together.
It makes a lot more sense
to have a smaller launch
vehicle and [INAUDIBLE].
So you must have considered
that possibility [INAUDIBLE]..
GRIFFIN: Yes, on the
grounds of obviousness.
That's not a good strategy
for a couple of reasons,
the first of which is that any
payload that goes to the Moon
is--
50% of it is propellant.
And a large fraction
of that is hydrogen.
And it might well be that
the most difficult technology
of spaceflight in our era is
preventing liquid hydrogen
from boiling off.
I forget the rates,
but it's significant,
so that if you intend to leave
a liquid-hydrogen-powered stage
in orbit for any length of
time, like weeks and months,
many percent of the
propellant load will boil off.
Now, we can argue how many
percent many percent is
and how much effort I can go to
thermally isolate the payload,
but it's a difficult problem.
If I am going to assemble
a lunar payload of, say,
50 or so metric
tons, which is-- it's
kind of hard to do it
for much less than that
unless I can shrink people.
In an EELV for example,
using that payload capacity
to get all the stuff up that
we needed in low Earth orbit
or on the way to the
Moon, the minimum anybody
was able to come up with was a
scheme that had at least half
a dozen EELV class launches.
So then I-- I mean, I used
to be in this business.
If you get out and
talk to the guys who
launch Atlas and
Deltas, and you know
they might get off one a
month if it was really pushed.
And who else is going to
be able to do a lot better?
So it now takes six months
to assemble a payload
to go to the Moon,
of which, you know,
the liquid hydrogen is
sitting there boiling off.
And the pieces and parts
don't join together well.
The whole logistics
strategy for--
I don't think we'd
get permission
to go if we needed six launches
minimum or more for every time
we wanted to head for the Moon.
Moreover, if I need
that many launches
every time I want
to go or more--
the standard version had nine--
and if you think I have a
98% probability of success
on any given launch,
multiply 90--
0.98 to the ninth,
and you probably
won't like the
reliability number.
So if any one of
those launches fails,
I've now lost the
whole mission, right?
I'm not even talking
about crew fatality.
I'm just talking about
an important piece
of the overall mission
assembly didn't go.
So for reasons of logistics,
for reasons of packaging,
for reasons of fuel,
propellant tank technology,
and for reasons
of reliability, we
decided that it was best
to have fewer launches.
If I had pieces and
parts that it could all
be done easily in one big
launch and still give us
the kind of capability we
need, we might have done that.
But that was the answer.
I'm giving you verbal arguments,
but we reduced all that
to numbers.
And oh, by the way,
it was hugely cheaper
not to do half a dozen or
eight or nine launches.
It was hugely cheaper.
So we subjected it to the most
rigorous analysis we could.
And it wasn't even a close call.
Over there?
AUDIENCE: I understand that--
GRIFFIN: No, I'm sorry, over
on this side of the room--
has had his hand up for a while.
AUDIENCE: We have [INAUDIBLE].
We have the commercial
guy wants more money.
You mentioned wanting
to do commercial stuff.
Could we achieve
positive time impacts
on CEB and positive
budget impacts that
could go back to my
science lady if we
use more commercial stuff?
And that-- could we get
more synergy out of this?
GRIFFIN: Well, maybe, but
again, back to chicken and egg,
not in the next
four or five years,
because there is no
commercial capability.
So if I enable it now,
then in four or five years,
it might be there, in
which case, if it is,
it will hugely
reduce our logistics
costs to space station.
And I will be able to put that
money back in other things.
That's why I'm investing now.
AUDIENCE: If that's
the case, could we
consider spinning off some of
those mandates for a few years
to other organizations, other
agencies in the government that
might be willing to handle that
in the next four to five years?
GRIFFIN: No.
AUDIENCE: No?
GRIFFIN: Look, there is
a couple of government
101 things here that you need
to understand so that you don't
ask questions like that again.
[LAUGHTER]
Government agencies
are not allowed
to make up their own missions.
I can't-- I don't want to.
But my feelings about
it are irrelevant.
I can't decide on my own either
to acquire or shed missions.
Other agencies can't decide
that they will accept a mission
requirement that I give them.
The charters of the
different federal agencies
are enshrined in legislation.
There is a 1958 Space
Act, as amended,
that created and charters
NASA to do certain things.
It charters the DOD.
You know, all the
agencies are like that.
I don't get to just decide
what my charter ought to be.
Such decisions are
not accompanied
without an enormous amount
of groaning and screaming
throughout all of government
if they need to be adjusted.
I can't imagine a
policy environment
in which somebody--
in which just having
decided within the last
couple of years what
NASA's purpose was going to
be for the next 20-some years,
and having just been
approved by the Congress,
if somebody says,
oh, by the way now
we think we'd be better if some
other agency handled the Earth
to orbit transportation problem.
Politics is the art
of the possible.
This is just not something
which is even possible.
Now, if I can get a successful
commercial investment going,
then I can use NASA dollars to
procure commercial services.
And I will.
I absolutely will.
But I cannot offload that
on some other agency.
That is just not there.
All the way in the back?
AUDIENCE: If somebody like
Donald Trump or George Lucas
was offered $5 to $10 million to
the winner of a certain debate,
would you or anybody in NASA
debate Richard Hoagland?
And either he's a bum.
Or his ideas are great, and
just decide one way or the other
and get--
be done with it?
GRIFFIN: Who is
Richard Hoagland?
[LAUGHTER]
AUDIENCE: The face on Mars.
GRIFFIN: Oh, I'm sorry.
Yeah, I'm not going
to address that.
There is no face on Mars.
It's a land formation.
Stop.
[LAUGHTER]
I mean, stop me or I'll shoot.
[LAUGHTER]
In the back?
Yeah, sorry, okay.
AUDIENCE: I was
wondering if you had
any idea when the
astronaut selection
process might be restarted.
GRIFFIN: I've got 140-some
astronauts, I think.
I hope I got the count right.
And something like 70
of them haven't flown.
AUDIENCE: But I'll
work for free.
[LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE]
GRIFFIN: Take care of yourself
and stay in good physical shape
for the next crew selection.
And we've got 16 shuttle
flights plus one for Hubble.
And there is only
so many rookies
we can carry on each flight.
And it's fairly obvious
that we won't even
fly, be able to fly all
the folks we've got,
which is very regrettable.
I mean, you know, I--
but those are the mathematics.
So no, I don't think we're
going to be selecting any more
astronauts for a little.
I'm sorry.
Center there-- just because
you're under the light
and I can see you.
AUDIENCE: As you know, there are
many system studies have shown
that electric propulsion
can improve payload mass
and decrease cost to
Mars, and of course,
and beyond the solar system.
So I was wondering
if you could address
the cancellation of most of
NASA's electric propulsion
funding and when you
see it coming back?
GRIFFIN: Well, I see
it coming back when
I have money to pay for it.
The Prometheus program was
scoped out at $11 billion.
And that was before any
hardware had been cut.
There is just not
$11 billion in--
I mean, maybe there is some
parallel quantum universe
according to the many
worlds theory in which there
is $11 billion for NASA
to spend in this era
on electric propulsion,
but it isn't
the universe I'm inhabiting.
That just is not
going to happen.
Yeah, electric propulsion,
if we developed it,
would be really neat.
It's a great way to
move cargo around.
I would love to
have money for space
nuclear thermal propulsion and
for space nuclear power, which
would feed into the
electric propulsion.
I would just love to have
money for all that stuff--
don't have it.
I think NASA is in a
place where we have
the money we're going to get.
We have to demonstrate that
we can do some neat things
with that money, things
that are strategically
important to the United States,
and which excite the public.
And we have to do
those things well.
And this has got to occupy
us for the next half dozen
to a dozen years.
And when we do that, when we
demonstrate once again that we
can execute missions with
skill, and cunning, and daring,
and innovation, and be reliable
in doing what we say that we
can do, then maybe
people will listen to us
when we say we would
like to go beyond.
But we have some
things to prove.
Back there?
AUDIENCE: So can
you comment at all
on how you might use this
hardware for Mars missions?
System engineering, you could
say, or at least [INAUDIBLE]??
GRIFFIN: Well, sure.
The reason why the
lunar architecture
looks the way it does is that
the Earth orbit rendezvous
sequence we have is a little
piece and a big piece.
Well, the big
piece is big enough
that, within four or
five launches spaced out
over off two launch
pads, 39A and B,
that are probably going
to be with us for a while,
within a few months
we could put together
a Mars payload launched
in 100-metric-ton chunks.
That's about the
size of a payload
that you need to go to Mars.
If you've studied
the problem at all,
I'm sure you've come out
with that same conclusion,
because everyone else
who has ever looked at it
has said it's about
one space station
mass equivalent to go to Mars.
And I don't think we want
to spend 15 years doing it.
So the lunar architecture
looks the way
it does in order to provide
a heavy lifter leave behind.
The CEV looks the way it does
because it's a vehicle which--
among certain other choices.
But it is one choice which
can bring a crew back
from Mars return velocities.
The fundamental
purpose of the CEV
is to get the crew the first
100 miles up and the last 100
miles back.
Going to Mars, we will live
in a hibernation module
of some kind, maybe
derived from what we
do on Space Station, maybe not.
But we will clearly need
more than just the CEV
and the heavy lifter.
But we will need those.
And they look the way
they do in large part
so that what we're
doing for the Moon
can transfer over to Mars--
now, not with any
thought that what
we're doing for the
Moon is everything
that we need for Mars,
far from it, but at least
what we develop
to go to the Moon
should be useful
in going to Mars.
In the orange shirt?
AUDIENCE: What are
the lessons learned
from ISS regarding
international collaboration
in deep-space flight?
GRIFFIN: I've said many times,
but only because I believe it,
that the international
cooperation,
the pattern of international
cooperation that we've
gotten out of the
space station program
will be its most lasting legacy.
Because the hardware will
eventually come down,
but we have forged
over the last 20 years
partnerships with Europe,
Japan, Russia in very difficult
circumstances, in many cases.
And those partnerships have
hung together through exigencies
that I would have predicted,
and in fact did predict
would destroy the partnership.
So I was wrong.
They've held
together quite well.
I had a heads of agencies
meeting last week.
The partnership is
solid and strong.
We hope to take it
with us to the Moon.
We hope to add partner nations.
And we certainly hope to
take it with us to Mars.
AUDIENCE: Should
CEV be reusable?
With only two launches a
year, it doesn't seem so.
GRIFFIN: Thanks for
your economic analysis.
The part of CEV which
is reusable or might be
reusable as the command module.
And it is indeed an
interesting question
as to whether it ought
to be reusable or not.
The reason why I've
asked that it be reusable
is that, if I don't
ask the question,
I can guarantee that I
will only get one answer.
And that is that it
should be expendable.
And the contractors
would love nothing
more than to build a new
one for me each time.
In point of fact, the Apollo
command module was reusable.
We just didn't reuse it.
I mean, it could have even
been reused on a lunar mission
without replacing the
heat shield we used.
The heat shield was
so over designed.
But we didn't plan
to do it, and didn't.
So the question I'm asking
our team is, essentially,
why can't it be reusable?
And if you want to
reuse it, how would you
design it to make it so?
And if the answer comes out to
be prohibitive, we won't do it.
It's really an
economic question.
Our cost modeling people, who
I've known for a long time
and truly believe to be
the best in the world,
indicate that if we can
get four or five reuses out
of a command module,
we get over the knee
in the curve for the
non-recurring engineering
to make that
statement come true.
And if we get 10
reuses out of it,
we really make
money like a bandit.
So we're not trying
for the shuttle will
fly 100 flights kind of reuse.
We're trying for 5 or 10.
And if it doesn't make
sense, we won't do it.
Since you already seem
to know the answer,
maybe you can just phone up my
cost model guys and tell them.
And I can get them
working on other stuff.
But all joking
aside, we're trying
to take an unbiased
look at it and see.
Reusability is obviously
not a technical issue.
It is obviously doable.
The question is, what
does it cost to do it?
And does that cost
pay for itself--
don't know yet.
Sir?
AUDIENCE: I am former
Russian [INAUDIBLE]..
Could you give more
specific answer just mention
the question, your vision with
relationship with the Russians
with space exploration?
Be more specific.
GRIFFIN: Well, I don't know--
AUDIENCE: Can your answer
be just more specific?
GRIFFIN: I will try.
The Russians have
been superb partners.
They have done
what they said they
would do in a period of great
difficulty for the United
States and for the international
partnership and space
station as a whole.
I believe that as the space--
when the space station gets
assembled, we will all use it.
We will find ample use for it.
But I believe, then,
that the partner nations
will want something new to do.
And I believe that Russia will
want to be a part of that.
We can't hold a gun to
their head and make them.
But I believe that Russia will
want to be a partner with us.
As one now of three
nations in the world
with their own spacefaring
capability in terms
of human spaceflight, I would
like to have them on board.
And there will be
places for them.
AUDIENCE: I will try.
GRIFFIN: But they need to
be volunteers, not draftees.
I mean, I can't make them do it.
So ultimately, it will be
up to the Russian president
and the Russian Duma.
AUDIENCE: Thank you.
GRIFFIN: [SPEAKING RUSSIAN]
HOFFMAN: Two or
three more questions.
GRIFFIN: Sure, a
couple more questions--
yes, ma'am?
AUDIENCE: Do you
envisage countries
like China and India
joining us [INAUDIBLE]??
GRIFFIN: The president has
already extended an invitation
to India to invite closer space
cooperation with the United
States on his visit last week.
And I'm looking forward to that.
Relationships with
China are, as you know,
sometimes difficult. I
look at the space program
as a way to make those
relationships easier.
And I hope that a
way can be found
to encourage such cooperation.
Right now, such cooperation
in space with China
hinges on larger issues
involving defense,
and human rights, and
trade, and other things
that go well above NASA.
And so I really just can't
comment on that at the present.
In the back?
AUDIENCE: Yeah, so
you talked about what
you need from entrepreneurs
and companies.
What do you need from us,
research universities?
GRIFFIN: Turn out
great students.
I'm not being flip.
Universities exist first
and foremost in my mind--
and I've been to enough of
them-- exist to educate.
I was telling,
mentioning to a student
earlier who asked that question,
I said, you know, you're
equipping yourselves
as students, not as--
you professors are equipping
the students with the tools
that you're going to be
using for a 40-year career.
Build those tools well,
because you're never
going to get as much opportunity
to learn and grow as you
have here at the university.
So that's the first thing.
The second thing,
of course, is that I
mean, I would be hard put
to think of anything that we
do at NASA, whether it's robotic
science missions, or space
architectures, or in many
cases very specific subsystems
and instruments where
universities and university
laboratories are not involved.
I mean, the Draper
Lab grew out of,
and the Lincoln Lab grew
out of such interactions.
I came back to NASA from Johns
Hopkins University's Applied
Physics Laboratory.
I worked at the
Jet Propulsion Lab.
They're operated by other great
institutions, Johns Hopkins
and Caltech.
You know, the space enterprise
involves universities
at every level.
One of the things
that I hope we do,
and maybe the most
important thing,
really, is to be doing the
kinds of things in space
that makes students want to
do difficult stuff in order
to be part of it.
That may be our greatest value.
Sir?
AUDIENCE: Have you thought
of your long-term strategy
of switching the Moon
program to a Mars program?
Because it seems like
you might be locked in
to use to go to the Moon, at
least budget-wise, [INAUDIBLE]
Mars.
GRIFFIN: Well, the
decision of what
we do at the Moon versus
when we transition to Mars
will be made by
future administrators,
and future congresses,
and future presidents.
I've tried to craft
and to supervise
the crafting of an architecture
that allows but does not
require someone to
develop a lunar base,
and that allows but does not
require a transition to Mars
based on the CEV and
the heavy lifter.
And again, we need some
additional stuff to go to Mars.
There is not a
technical need for
and there is not a
budgetary possibility
of beginning work on a
Mars architecture today.
First thing's first, we're
trying to finish the station,
fly out the shuttle, rebuild
a capability get back
to the Moon.
Now, next year-- look,
when I walked into NASA,
we were 15 months late,
as far as the Congress
and the White House viewed
it, of putting forth
an architecture for how we
would merely return to the Moon
and how we would
replace the shuttle.
And my overseers were not
reluctant to let me know that.
So in the last 11 months,
we've put together
an architecture which everybody
seems to find acceptable--
not elegant, but acceptable for
replacing shuttle crew and lift
capabilities, for getting
people back to the Moon,
for sustaining
the space station,
for showing a path to Mars.
So this year, we're
going to talk about,
with our international
partners, and next year,
what we're going
to do on the Moon
and who we're going
to do it with.
And then as that begins
to get firmed up,
we're going to talk
about how we will
use these pieces, and parts,
and partners to get to Mars.
I think it would be--
one of my favorite movies
is John Wayne's True Grit,
where these guys are squaring
off against each other
on opposite sides of a clearing.
And one of them
insults the other.
And they say, that's bold
talk for a one-eyed fat man.
I think it would be bold
talk for a one-eyed thin man
if I were to start
prescribing in gross detail
the architecture, and
timing, and transition
from lunar-based activities
to Mars-based activities
when the 2020s are about the
earliest we can see that coming
true.
I'm just hoping to be
above ground in the 2020s.
So it's not that we don't care.
It's that I think it's
a little premature.
HOFFMAN: We're going
to have to cut it.
GRIFFIN: Okay, I
think we're done.
HOFFMAN: And I think
that last answer
on the dream of
going to Mars will
get us all excited to go home,
because there is probably
Martian blood flowing
in all our veins.
That's what we all dream about.
Mike, it's been great
having you here.
Thanks so much.
GRIFFIN: Thank you.
[APPLAUSE]
