Space & Astronomy/Space and Astronomy (October 1993).iso/mac/TEXT/SPACEDIG/V16_6/V16NO601.TXT

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Date: Fri, 21 May 93 05:11:53
From: Space Digest maintainer <[e-mail]>
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Subject: Space Digest V16 #601
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Space Digest                Fri, 21 May 93       Volume 16 : Issue 601

Today's Topics:
                   Impediments to NASA productivity
            Refueling GRO (was Re: HST Servicing Mission)

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Date: Thu, 20 May 1993 14:45:20 GMT
From: [e-mail]
Subject: Impediments to NASA productivity
Newsgroups: sci.space,talk.politics.space

I know some folks on Usenet have some strong opinions about this topic,
so I thought I'd share this with you.  As usual, my Usenet posts
represent only my opinion, not anything official on the part of the
Space Shuttle Program Office, JSC, NASA, the Executive Branch, the
President, the Federal Government, or the American people to whom I am
ultimately respnosible.  (I feel compelled to state that explicitly
because of a recent e-mail exchange I had with an amateur astronomer
who was worried that my ideas for space advertising represented some
kind of official NASA position.)  I received the following note,
forwarded from my boss, asking for input:

  FROM: [A mid-level JSC official, who did not explicitly give me
         permission to use her name]
  SUBJECT: Impediments to JSC productivity


  The Vice President has established a National Performance Review
  activity which is looking at federal regulations (e.g., Brooks act,
  GSA regs, OMB regs, GPO regs etc.) and the impediments to productivity
  to the agencies that the regulations pose.

  NASA is establishing a working group to review the inputs [from] the
  agency and coordinate with the VP's National Performance Review

  activity.

  [NASA Headquarters organization] Code J has given us the opportunity
  to identify any [barriers] to JSC productivity not only [from] the
  Federal regulations but also form INTERNAL NASA regulations,
  procedures, or lack thereof!  We need to provide the preliminary JSC
  list on 5/21/93.

  Please provide ANY inputs to me no later than COB 5/20/93. Please
  cover not only the barrier, but also let me know if it is internal or
  external and precisely how it is impeding your productivity.  If you
  have proposed solutions feel free to share those too!  Remember, this
  is our first cut.. through our JSC representatives to the NASA working
  group JSC would have plenty of opportunity to refine.

  NOW IS YOUR CHANCE TO FORMALLY PROVIDE YOUR INPUTS TO THE GOVERNMENT!!!

Here was my response:

Inputs to National Performance Review regarding Impediments to JSC productivity

Ken Jenks, NASA/JSC/GM2

05/18/93

I have a great deal of skepticism that we, as an Agency or as a Nation,
will have the will to make the hard choices necessary to even begin to
improve our efficiency.  In order to improve our efficiency in any
reasonable way, we must (1) measure our current efficiency, (2)
determine changes which will increase that efficiency, (3) implement
those changes, (4) determine the effects of those changes on our
efficiency by returning to step (1).

I am skeptical that we will ever measure our current efficiency.  To do
that, we need to define "efficiency" -- a slippery concept at best --
then establish a systematic method for measuring this nebulous quantity
across the Agency (or at least across JSC).  For the sake of this
discussion, I'll assume that "efficiency" is defined as "amount of work
done" divide by "number of dollars spent."  We probably can't get two
people to agree on the definition of the term, much less agree on a
numerical measurement of what our current efficiency is.

I am skeptical that we will ever determine changes which will increase
our efficiency.  Most of the inefficiencies I have observed at NASA are
the result of management decisions, and it is difficult (at best) to
convince a manager that his organization is inefficient, since this
carries the implication that the manager has failed in some way.  Any
suggestions to increase efficiency must begin by admitting that current
efficiency is less than optimal.  In addition, change costs money.  It
will cost us time and money to implement changes to increase our
efficiency, and there is no funding budgeted for this.  Our ridiculous
tradition of a "straight-line budget" for each NASA organization gives
no incentive to efficiency, and no room to spend money to increase
efficiency.  When we desire to decrease an office's (or a Program's)
budget, we never manage to fund the changes which can increase
efficiency; we just cut the budget.  Since efficiency cannot increase
in this environment, we end up with less work getting done.

It is even more difficult to implement changes in the existing,
entrenched managerial structure due to the usual inertia of
organizations -- "We've always done it that way," "That may be a good
idea, but it won't work here because..." and "But that would put people
out of work," are all phrases which come to mind.  Every time a change
is proposed, our NASA culture has taught us to shoot holes in it,
inventing reasons why the change will not work.  (For numerous
examples, examine our JSC Employee Suggestion Program, where less than
10% of the suggestions are implemented.  It seems to be our natural
inclination to look at a new idea and come up with a list of reasons
why it won't work, when the real reason is that we don't want to try.)

Even in those few instances when changes are implemented which may
increase efficiency or productivity, we never "close the loop" and
measure the increase.  As W. Edwards Deming says with regard to
quality, "if you can't measure it, you can't manage it."  And we at
NASA have never measured our efficiency.  It's likely that we never
will.

Even though I'm skeptical that we will ever implement a rational
program to improve NASA's efficiency, I am willing to contribute the
following thoughts.

Federal regulations which define the efficiency of each Governmental
body and which mandate the measurement of that efficiency in reports to
Congress would be a great improvement on the current system of
efficiency improvements by guess and by golly.  Each Agency would be
expected to define the criteria by which their efficiency is to be
measured.  For NASA, that might include number of patents, number of
Shuttle flights which land, number of scientific articles published in
refereed scientific journals, amount of useful scientific data returned
from space, number of planets explored (in terms of pixels, square
kilometers, and image resolution), number of test flights of
experimental aircraft, or other measures of our productivity, divided
by our annual budget.  Each productivity metric could be given a value
in dollars which gives a measure of its value to the country.  Any time
the value of an avenue of exploration is less than the amount of money
spent on that avenue, its budget and metrics must be reviewed.

Even without Federal regulations, NASA or even JSC could implement
an across-the-board system of measuring its own efficiency.  We
absolutely must measure our efficiency before we can make any
rational attempt to improve it.  How else will we know that we
have succeeded?

Without efficiency metrics, I can propose several changes in our
present NASA/JSC regulations which will increase our efficiency by
257%, guaranteed.

In order to achieve our visions and missions within our allotted
budget, we must work with Congress to reform procurement, personnel
and payroll practices at NASA and the rest of the Federal
government.  One of the personnel management problems we must
address is how to promote leaders as opposed to managers and
bureaucrats.

1.  Procurement

    NASA procurement is a mess.  In efforts to prevent waste and fraud,
    to promote special interests (minority-owned small businesses), and
    to promote supposed open competition, Congress and OMB have passed
    a bewildering array of laws and regulations which hinder
    procurement.  To help us find our way through this tangle of
    paperwork, we employ procurement officials who understand the maze,
    but who don't have any technical background.  In trying to
    accomplish NASA's goals in space science and technology, we must
    procure complicated, high-tech equipment.  This leads to a
    conflict:  procurement officials don't understand what equipment
    the engineers need, and engineers don't understand the intricacies
    of the procurement process.  For example, our office submitted a
    request for printers for our networked IBM PC's.  A procurement
    official changed the paperwork to allow printers for Macintosh
    computers.  If we hadn't caught the error, we might have received
    printers incompatible with our computers simply because the
    procurement official didn't understand the technical requirements.

    We must change the process.  We must either employ technically
    astute people in our procurement office (unlikely for a variety of
    reasons) or we must simplify the paperwork so that engineers can
    understand it without years of training.

    In estimating the duration of information system development
    projects, the duration of any procurement activities is the longest
    single duration of any activity, and the most variable.
    Procurement actions can "rush" through the system in as little as
    two weeks, but we have seen some last literally years.  This delay
    -- and the uncertainty in the length of the delay -- causes
    uncounted inefficiencies in all high-tech projects.

2.  Personnel

    The skill level of NASA personnel is highly variable.  There are
    some highly skilled, highly motivated people at NASA.  These people
    are motivated by more than just money and benefits; they care about
    the space program, and they are driven by their passion to make a
    difference.  There are also people here at NASA who are here just
    to receive a paycheck, who contribute the minimal amount necessary
    to retain their jobs, and who don't give a damn about the space
    program.  There's a third group of people: those who are highly
    skilled, highly motivated, and who care about the space program,
    but they can't get a job at NASA because the slackers are taking
    up space.  Our personnel regulations don't allow supervisors to get
    rid of people who don't contribute in favor of newcomers who will.
    If we are really committed to improving efficiency at NASA, we
    would change our regulations to encourage supervisors to FIRE
    people who will not work to make room for folks who care.

3.  Payroll

    NASA has made some improvements in the area of employee
    compensation, but it is still not at parity with industry.  I know
    of one computer expert who was hired away by the petrochemical
    industry with a 20% increase in pay, performing roughly the same
    job as she was doing for NASA.  This inequity in pay between
    Government and Industry almost guarantees second-rate personnel in
    Government positions.  Some of us value things other than monetary
    compensation, like job satisfaction and contributing toward a cause
    we believe in.  But we have families to feed and mortgages to pay.
    If NASA seriously desires to maintain a top-notch work force, we
    must arrange top-notch pay and benefits.

4.  Contractor vs. Civil Service Expertise

    We have evolved a system whereby overworked, underqualified Civil
    Servants supervise technically challenging work which is done by
    Contractors.  Frequently, the Civil Servants lack the technical
    expertise to even understand what the Contractors are doing, much
    less evaluate the Contractors for efficiency and performance
    ratings.  We need to put in place policies which require that Civil
    Servants have the necessary technical skills to operate our
    Programs even if the Contractors disappear overnight (which happens
    more often than is necessary, causing more inefficiency).

    Using Civil Servants to perform technical tasks should logically be
    more efficient than paying a Contractor, his manager, his Human
    Resources department and his security guard to perform the task.
    We frequently contract out tasks which could more efficiently be
    accomplished by Civil Service personnel simply because it's easier
    to do the paperwork to hire a Contractor than it is to hire (or
    temporarily transfer) a Civil Servant.  This is a barrier to
    efficiency.

5.  Training

    NASA must improve its training programs across the board.  One
    example of the need for training is the poor quality of many
    meetings at NASA.  Meeting chairmen are not being properly trained
    to run meetings; this results in gross, hidden inefficiencies
    across the whole Agency.  It is often impossible to tell a manager
    (or anybody else for that matter) that he needs training; people
    take that as an insult.

    I propose a mandatory, monthly training day, where all NASA
    employees (with few exceptions) would either give or receive
    training.  This would eliminate the most frequent excuse for not
    attending training: "I'm so busy doing my job, I don't have time to
    learn to do it better."

6.  National Space Goals

    NASA must find new ways of cooperating with Congress and the
    President to develop good national and international policies for
    the utilization and eventual colonization of space.

    If we define efficiency in terms of getting the job done for the
    least amount of money, we must be sure we define the job carefully.
    At an Agency level, this means that we must work with Congress to
    determine valid, reasonable, useful goals for the Agency, and then
    measure our progress in achieving those goals.  Any NASA program
    which does not measurably contribute to those goals should be
    scrapped.

    As an Agency, we have been drifting since the end of the Apollo
    Program without clearly-defined goals or a reason for existence.
    If our goal is to produce aeronautics and space technology, we must
    be able to measure how much of that technology we are developing
    and distributing to our customers.  If our goal is to inspire
    students to careers in science and engineering, we can use surveys
    to measure our success in doing so.  If our goal is to colonize the
    solar system, we must establish benchmarks and measure our progress
    in accomplishing this.

    We should propose a list of Agency goals to Congress and the
    President, and request their help in ensuring that these goals
    match what our ultimate customers, the American people, want out of
    NASA.  We should establish mechanisms for measuring our progress in
    achieving these goals, and for reporting that metric back to
    Congress.  Only in this way can we re-establish the credibility of
    this Agency with Congress and the public.

7.  Commitment

    Our nation lacks commitment for our space program.  Although we've
    had many successes, we've also had an embarrassing number of
    failures.  We landed on the moon half a dozen times, then we slunk
    home with our collective tail between our budgetary legs.  We flew
    the world's first space station, the we allowed it to burn up
    because we couldn't -- wouldn't -- reboost it in time.  We proposed
    an efficient, fully reusable Space Transportation System with
    dozens of launches per year, then we scaled it back to the
    use-and-refurbish Space Shuttle with eight launches per year -- if
    we're lucky -- and a standing army of 20,000 people to support it.
    We proposed an international space station, then we redesigned it
    into oblivion.  We agreed with President Bush to go "back to the
    moon, back to the future, and, this time, back to stay," then we
    gutted the funding for the Space Exploration Initiative.  We backed
    out of a rendezvous with Halley's comet.  We cancelled the OMV.
    And each time we change direction, we waste millions -- even
    billions -- of dollars and years of work from our best and
    brightest.

    We need to establish a firm direction for our space programs, then
    force ourselves to stick to it.  We need the whole-hearted
    cooperation of Congress, and more discipline than Congress has ever
    been willing to demonstrate.  We must -- absolutely must -- be 100%
    honest with ourselves, with Congress, with the American people, and
    with our international partners.  Our record for accurately
    estimating the cost of gargantuan projects is abyssmal.  Every time
    we mouth such an estimate, we tell a lie.  This is a barrier to our
    efficiency, because we grossly underestimate the number of dollars
    required to do a job.

    Even when NASA and/or the President establishes a firm goal,
    Congress does not agree, and we end up changing horses in
    mid-stream.  Or Congress decides we need an Advanced Solid Rocket
    Motor, despite our objections, and more inefficiency prevails.
    This must end immediately.

    If we can't agree on goals in space, maybe we shouldn't be there.

8.  Multi-year funding

    Congress must face up to the undeniable fact that space travel is
    different from every other Federal expenditure.  Our large programs
    require a long, consistent financial commitment, or vast
    inefficiencies result.  The present redesign of the Space Station
    Freedom Program is evidence of the inefficiencies introduced by
    constantly changing budgetary requirements.

    NASA's administration fights almost continuous battles for our
    annual budget, which obviously reduces the amount of time they can
    spend on accomplishing technical work and managing the Agency
    efficiently.  A multi-year budget for NASA would improve NASA's
    ability to maintain long-term commitments made with Congress,
    Industry and the International Partners, and improve our
    administration's ability to concentrate on the job at hand rather
    than continual skirmishes on Capitol Hill.

9.  Communication

    NASA does not communicate well internally.  We have research and
    development projects which overlap to a huge extent, but the
    researchers either don't know about the other projects or simply
    don't care.

    NASA must improve its internal communications to reduce duplication
    of effort.  As an example of the duplication of effort, there are
    dozens of software development groups in NASA who rarely, if ever,
    communicate.  There are at least a dozen "electronic library"
    projects at work across the agency.  There are hundreds of NASA
    databases, including scheduling, document production and action
    item tracking, only a meager handful of which can share data.  Just
    glancing down the organization charts at each of the NASA Field
    Centers reveals the extent of the duplication of effort.

    If we had an organized method of allowing every Agency employee to
    keep abreast of the work in every section and office, we could allow
    those employees to identify inefficiencies and overlaps between
    projects and to work actively to reduce those inefficiencies.

    I propose that the NASA Internal Communications Office use NASA
    technology to develop an electronic bulletin board which contains
    the annual strategic goals and weekly activity reports from all
    NASA organizations.  We have the technology to implement this
    today; I can demonstrate it to anyone who is interested.

    I further propose that the work of the Inter-Center Council on
    Computer Networking be given a higher priority, a permanent staff,
    and a budget suitable for the task at hand.  Computer communication
    is a large part of this Agency's future, and their efforts to
    improve that communication must be made one of the highest
    priorities for this Agency.  Computers which cannot talk to each
    other are a barrier to efficiency.

10.  Management

    NASA management has a bad reputation.  Because of its large,
    multi-year programs, tight budgetary requirements, and
    international scope, NASA should be at the cutting edge of
    innovative management practices.  This is far from the truth.  NASA
    manages its space programs with all the grace of a sumo wrestler.
    Our supervisors manage by fear and intimidation or are ineffective
    whiners.  Our Project Control practices are worse than useless.
    Our Budget Offices can't even tell us how much money we spent last
    year, much less how much we'll be able to spend a year from now.
    Our Personnel department is required to hire people with lesser
    qualifications simply because they are minorities and match a
    "hiring goal" (which they steadfastly refuse to call a quota).  Our
    Public Affairs Office is filled with incompetents who could never
    land a job on Madison Avenue, and who lack even a basic scientific
    background.  And anybody who dares to point out shortcomings in
    Management is rebuked, refuted or ignored.

    How efficient is our NASA management?  We have no hard data for
    answering the question, only anecdotal evidence.  But that evidence
    suggests to me that good managers are few, and those who manage
    efficient organizations are passed up for promotion in
    consideration of managers who govern large, inefficient empires.

    Aside from gripe sessions and baseless grousing, we really do not
    know how efficiently NASA manages.  Again, we have no metrics.  If
    NASA desires to become efficient, or to eliminate barriers to
    becoming efficient, we must first gather information documenting
    our efficiency.  We must institute a program for continually
    measuring and improving the quality of NASA management.

    NASA managers tend to be engineers who have been given more
    responsibility, but who are rarely formally trained in management
    skills.  Lack of management skills is a barrier to efficiency.  If
    we're serious about efficient management, we need managers who are
    not just engineers who are marginally qualified to be managers; we
    need highly skilled professional managers who have the high degree
    of technical knowledge required to run our aeronautics and space
    programs.  Given that most of our working troops are engineers with
    no training in management, we must train these engineers to become
    superb managers.  We can't do this training part-time.  I recommend
    that we mandate a formal college degree program in management for
    every NASA manager, this degree to be completed within five years
    of his promotion to management.  Managers who do not complete the
    degree will be demoted.

    We have developed a pattern at NASA of promoting people who can
    manage (at least marginally), but disregarding people who lead.  If
    NASA wants to develop leadership skills, we must learn to reward
    leaders for their actions.  Anybody who can run a Scout troop can
    be a manager at NASA today.  It takes true imagination, strong
    interpersonal skills and persistence to lead technical specialists
    from diverse backgrounds in our high-tech pursuits.  Leadership can
    be taught, but today's NASA culture actively discourages
    leadership.  We must change this.  We need people who can lead, not
    just run the office and push papers.

11.  Quality

    NASA's efforts at Total Quality Management are deplorable.  We
    pay lip service to W. Edwards Deming's teachings, but we refuse
    to make the large organizational changes necessary to truly
    embrace the TQM philosophy.

    Although we at JSC spent more than $1M in this last year on TQM
    training, and we have dozens of so-called quality teams, we have
    little to show for it.  We don't know what our current quality is,
    much less how to go about improving it continually.  Most of our
    organizations have never identified their customers, their
    products, and their processes.  Our procurement regulations require
    us to reward contracts based on price alone, disallowing any
    consideration of the quality history of the supplier.  We rely on
    inspection in almost all of our processes, rather than designing
    quality into the design of those processes.  Our organizations are
    full of fear.  Our management can manage, but they can't lead they
    way.  We have huge, never-mentioned barriers between our
    organizations.  Our traditions of "design by committee" and
    "committee by consensus" are barriers to individual pride in
    workmanship.  And we have some people who give lip service to
    "improving efficiency" but who don't recognize all of Deming's
    teachings at a glance.

The biggest barrier to improving efficiency at NASA is ignorance.  We
don't know what efficiency is, we don't know how to measure it, we
don't know how to manage it, we don't know how to improve it, and we
won't know when we're done.

Our next biggest barrier to efficiency is the organizational inertia
and individual pride which will resist the changes required to improve
that efficiency.

Our third biggest efficiency hurdle is our fear of change.  We must be
willing to embrace change, not simply tolerate it.  For only through
constant change can we move our Agency back to the peak of
high-technology, where we can use our aeronautics and space technology
to fuel the dreams of this country.

-- Ken Jenks, NASA/JSC/GM2, Space Shuttle Program Office
      [e-mail]  [phone]

     "It is mankind's manifest destiny to bring our humanity into space,
      to colonize this galaxy.  And as a nation, we have the power to
      determine whether America will lead or will follow.

      I say that America must lead."  -- Ronald Reagan

------------------------------

Date: Thu, 20 May 1993 09:48:40 -0600
From: John Gladu <[e-mail]>
Subject: Refueling GRO (was Re: HST Servicing Mission)
Newsgroups: sci.astro,sci.space,sci.space.shuttle

In article <[e-mail]>, [e-mail] (Henry
Spencer) writes:
> The current story is "no servicing mission is planned".  The thing *is*
> designed for it, and has had some annoying equipment failures that
> would be nice to fix, but at the moment the folks involved seem to
> think that it will function adequately for a suitable lifetime without
> a visit.

One of the objectives of the EVA performed by Dave Leestma and Kathy Sullivan
(I forget the mission number) was a kind of feasibility test for on-orbit
refueling.  I don't remember if they actually transferred any liquids/gasses,
it was more of a test to see if they could manipulate the connectors and
hoses, in zero-g, while wearing space suits.

During the months of prep for this EVA, the people (Fred Dawn's [this man is
brilliant] materials group) in the Manned Systems Division at JSC (Building
7) did some tests on Space Suit Assembly (SSA) materials.  There were one-
foot squares of all of the layers of the SSA, made from Class I (flight
quality) materials.  Also tested were helmets and visors.  They were placed
in a small vacuum chamber and had various propellants squirted on them.  The
worst affect was from (variant?) hydrazine on the helmet and visors.  Saying
that "it went through" is putting it mildly.  Picture the Alien blood
spatters in the first "Alien" film.

The hydrazine had more trouble getting through all the layers of the SSA:
1. Ortho Fabric (Nomex/Teflon/Kevlar) [what you see]
2. Aluminized Mylar (4 or 5 layers)
3. Neoprene coated rip-stop nylon
4. Dacron (restraint layer)
5. Urethane-coated nylon (bladder layer)

It could get through a couple of layers of the mylar, but it would diffuse
between the layers and lose effect.  Still, a great enough quantity could
conceivably get through to the bladder layer, where the urethane coating that
retains the oxygen would quickly degrade.

Another problem is getting a fuel-splashed crewmember back in the airlock
before all of the fuel has vaporized and diffused.  An airlock filled with
fuel vapors would not be a very nice place.  And if someone got splashed,
they'd be heading for the airlock pretty fast...

The moral of this story is:  refueling satellites is mighty hazardous.
It can be done, but I think they'd like to avoid it.


bcnu - John Gladu
Systems Support Center - Baylor College of Medicine
Voice: [phone]  Email: [e-mail]
Snail: One Baylor Plaza, Houston TX 77030
.opinions expressed are just that.obviously.

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End of Space Digest Volume 16 : Issue 601
------------------------------