Rocket Scientists -- A Dead or Dying Breed for the USAF:
and a plan for the future

	The Rocket Propulsion Directorate of Phillips Laboratories USAF was initially established in the 1960's as the Air Force Rocket Propulsion Laboratory (AFRPL). The location in the California Desert at Edwards Air Force Base was ideal for a collection of remote test stands. Here experimental tests could and did explode safely. The facility did not serve as a classical laboratory; the main function was to be a remote test site.

Test Site History

	A major initial facility use was as a test firing station for the F1 rocket engines used on Apollo flights. Rocketdyne, Canoga Park, CA made the engines and sent them to AFRPL for testing. Each F1 rocket engine had to fire flawlessly  several times at AFRPL before being  certified.  Thousands of workers were involved. Rusting large test stands dot the hills today.

	 Located nearby in both El Segundo (130 miles) and San Bernadino (80 miles) CA were the space and missile arms of the USAF Space And  Missile Systems Organization (SAMSO). These were the  centers where the AFRPL could integrate seamlessly into the highest levels of planning for USAF space and missiles. One would have expected the AFRPL to have played a strong role in the Air Force Space and Missiles programs. 

	There was surprisingly little interaction between SAMSO and AFRPL. The Aerospace Corporation, an on-site Federally Funded Contract Research Center (FFCRC) provided most of the rocket and missile expertise to the USAF/SAMSO. The AFRPL played little role for many years in the mainstream of the USAF. It was mainly a test center in the remote desert.

	The mentality of the AFRPL organization was always very much "hands on". The ordinary slow, logical thinking laboratory mentality was discouraged for "doing something" instead of thinking about it or analyzing it. The urgent- hurry up test stand mentality prevailed.

	The laboratory suffered the post Apollo decline in moneys and staff common to the  Aerospace industry. The decline was injurious to the quality of people surviving.

	In the 1970's, survivors say, the intellectual attitude was nearly pure hell. The AFRPL was run by Colonels as if it was a training facility in contract management for USAF officers. There are few good stories about that management attitude. In one of the budget cuts, engineering staff actually served turns doing building and grounds types of work to survive.

	In the 1970's,  a few individuals in the AFRPL organization are reported to have conceived the MX missile (renamed Peacekeeper). MX was to compete in the cold war missile threat race. Later, the lab backed the approach and obtained considerable credit for it.

Intellectual and Engineering Decline

	During the draw down, the analytical thinking people were slashed to the bone; there was the idea that they needed to be only "one deep" in any technical area. Actually, being only "one deep" is a guarantee that you will actually accomplish almost nothing. This is indicates  not knowing how to do design and design studies _ not knowing real propulsion engineering. The mentality of the "Rocket Scientist" as an intellectual never caught on at AFRPL. Instead it was the guy who blew things up in the process of making something work who was the hero. It was the test stand mentality. There was a strong anti- intellectual bias to the laboratory that has permeated the highest levels (survivors) of today.

	As time passed, the lab dropped in size and the staff generally aged. The culture of desert isolation was perpetuated and remains today. 

Space Defense Initiative _ Ruination of Organization

	In the 80's, the Space Defense Initiative (SDI) arrived upon the scene. A former division chief stated that he had felt that he would never rue the day that money was given to the lab. Then he stated that the SDI money and organization destroyed the laboratory organization. SDI had its choice of people and was alleged to have pulled the best out of any organization that it could. This  left impoverished organizations to conduct the traditional business of the lab.

Ineffective Training of New Young Generation

	In the late 80's to early 90's, new staffing occurred as senior experienced people were retiring. There was only small transmission of skills between the senior staff and the new green staff. The new staff have no effective source of training in the history of rocketry and associated technologies. They often attempt to reinvent things at great taxpayer cost with little success. Rocketry no longer attracts the best and the brightest. The lab has tried to run in-house programs of research and development to teach  (the next generation of "Rocket Scientists") the craft. In general these training efforts are simple failures.  The cost of these failed in-house training programs, including salary and overhead, is perhaps $5 million / year for a total of at least $20 million. 

	It is alleged that part of the reason for failure is that the senior staff don't share their experience and craft. It is also alleged that another reason is that many of the senior staff actually have few skills to transmit; there was  no history of the AFRPL as a real laboratory. It mostly served as a contracts management center. One talks of a "bimodal age distribution" where people are either senior or very junior with almost no middle ground.

	For the last five years, there has been a program "High Energy Density Materials" for fuels for the next generation of launch vehicles and missiles. Many of the scientists working on the program feel that it will never work _  that the ideas are impractical without any chance of reality.  Senior lab management are alleged to agree but state that the work should go on because "It has a goal and it is a chance to publish some good scientific work for the Air Force, which is our job". This task costs perhaps $6 million / year (contracts, salaries, overhead, capital equipment,...) for $25 million or more total.
	
	What is described here is  a long term destruction of rocket propulsion skills and failure to retrain. A waste of money and opportunity exists  in trying to train young staff in rocket propulsion skills. In addition to this $20 million, there is  perhaps $25 million or so in the high energy fuels research of dubious value. 

What Future Roles Can Be Filled?

	There has been much debate of the future of US space launch technologies.  USAF General Mooreman issued a Congressional mandated report on the options of reusable rocket propulsion systems e.g. the Single Stage To Orbit (SSTO) and new expendable launch vehicles. Since NASA and the USAF have failed to cooperate for decades, the SSTO effort went to NASA and  the expendable launch vehicle work to DoD, Phillips Laboratory.

	NASA has  problems of organization that inhibit running of large programs. However, NASA has a large staff, with good education, with some good work experiences and with fairly good laboratories around the country.  There are allegations of poor management and deep bureaucracy mentality that inhibit ability to conduct a major new project. Nevertheless the technical skills should be present to be assembled into a useful team. NASA has not suffered as a rotation tour stop for military career paths; it has remained technically oriented.

	In the DoD effort, there simply aren't useful skills of adequate depth from which to form a technical team chartered to develop the next generation of highly advanced expendable launch vehicles. The senior people aren't there. The junior people have virtually no useful technical skills. They have fallen into a less productive mode tolerated and encouraged by the senior staff. These young people have practically recreated the "hands on" mentality that prevailed in the 1960's at the laboratory. This mentality that cannot be exploited for dramatic new rocket propulsion engineering. The mentality is not modern day engineering; it is merely engineering by trial and error as in the 1960's rocket test stand sense.

	Over the years, the United States has thrown away it's real expertise in rocket propulsion. Today we are paying the price from loss of lead in space launch capabilities. Tomorrow we will continue to pay the price should we staff our "catch up" efforts with relatively  inexperienced and untrained young staff. The best and brightest are not in rocketry today and often are not in science or technology at all.

	This situation needs careful attention. It  could well be a setup for failure for the DoD side of the task. The DoD, through Phillips Lab - Propulsion Directorate, is not currently so staffed or capable of carrying out the task of developing or evaluating new expendable space launch vehicles.  There will be continued waste of taxpayer dollars, perhaps great waste, should this occur without experienced, bold and insightful oversight.

	 The DoD  may attempt to build from this organization the Nation's future in space _ based upon expendable launch vehicle technology. The organization seems not capable of such accomplishment. While the waste of money is considerable, we will never have another chance to develop expendable launch vehicles should this chance fail. The skills simply aren't there. Aerospace rocketry is not a respected career option forthe brightest  young engineers. 

	If we do this as a Nation, we must do it in a  more logical skills based manner. There must be a better way. We paid dearly once to develop space launch technology from scratch. We shouldn't pay for inexperienced  organizations and staff to try for a second time.


A National Center Approach  

	These are times which call for termination of an organization and structuring some new concept, especially one modeled after domestic and foreign successes. The French rocket propulsion technology organization is of a different model than that for the US. There are 1) government agencies, 2) companies jointly owned by the French government and industry and 3) industrial companies working in collaboration. They are a major threat to both the US rocket launch industry and to the domestic aircraft industry. There is a success there which will be valuable to implement in an appropriate domestic fashion.

	For years, the US semiconductor industry faced the Asian threat of production takeover. The foreign advantage included a higher percentage of R&D to sales from subsidies from Asian government agencies.  The eventual domestic response was forming  a joint US government  / industry semiconductor processing research  center known as SEMATECH. This has been an effective appropriate domestic response. It somewhat resenbles the above French approach. 

	We cannot develop internationally competitive rocket propulsion technologies  by the use of the old 1960's management model of many domestic competing propulsion companies and rich funding sources. That amazing time is long dead and over, never to return.

	The NASA part of the problem could  possibly be solved by massive and strict reorganization, something like the painful reorganization that IBM has been forced to take. NASA and IBM are both big enough that inside of them are the people and resources to be a platform for a future large success. But lack of size, depth and real existing inner capability force other thinking onto solving the DoD future space launch problem.

	There is no logical comparison of NASA and the Phillips Laboratory Rocket Propulsion Directorate _ apples and oranges may not be nearly adequate differentiation. The scales, sizes and goals are so different that no comparison should be attempted. One solution is to simply give the entire space launch  task to a reorganized  NASA, close the DoD facilities and transfer handfuls of productive DoD people to the NASA task.

	Other alternatives for the DoD space launch efforts include a mimic of the foreign success in rocketry and aircraft and a mimic of domestic success in the semiconductor field.

	The strongest recommendation for the low cost / low risk / high payoff for space propulsion and transportation is the discontinuation of the existing inadequate DoD effort and organization and replacement with a joint industry / government collaboration modeled after something successful such as SEMATECH.  We can and should copy the best of the proven foreign accomplishments and the best of proven domestic successes. We should not fool ourselves into bandaging inadequately staffed and trained organizations. For the DoD, we must reformulate the entire space launch engineering and management approach. We need to gather the real expertise, which has always been with the industry.

	We need to escape from a dismal past. This requires a fresh start and  new leadership or the new DoD space launch money becomes merely a new waste.
Rocket Scientists -- A Dead or Dying Breed for the USAF:
and a plan for the future