In Praise of Plan C

Last week, NASA Administrator Michael Griffin was embarrassed by a leaked email about his frustration with the United States plan to retire the Space Shuttle fleet without a good backup plan for manning the International Space Station. If the current plans remain intact, the US will not have its own launch vehicle during the period of time between the current Shuttle fleet’s retirement in 2010 and the new Orion Crew Exploration Vehicle fleet launch – estimated in 2015. It seems during the great thaw in post-Cold War US-Russo relations, we put all our space eggs in a matryoshka (Russian nesting doll). Our Plan B was to purchase space on Russian Soyuz launches to keep up our end of the bargain for manning the International Space Station. When Russian tanks rolled into Georgia last month and President Dmitry Medvedev made statements about not fearing the return of the Cold War, that plan hit a small snag. Administrator Griffin’s email pointed to the now obvious fact that there was no Plan C, where he went on to say, "In a rational world, we would have been allowed to pick a Shuttle retirement date to be consistent with Ares/Orion availability, we would have been asked to deploy Ares/Orion as early as possible and we would have been provided the necessary budget to make it so.”

Would have, could have, should have - 20/20 hindsight is of little practical value, assuming no nearby portal through the time/space continuum. But a Plan C – that is something we can use in the here and now.

A more personal example:

Back when my skin was green and baggy and my mind, body and soul were owned by the U.S. Air Force, we used to have a fancy name for Plan C – “tertiary.” The North American Encarta Dictionary defines tertiary as “third in degree, order, place, or importance” – Plan C. I am embarrassed to say that the one time in my life I really needed to know the meaning of this adjective, I was running behind on my way to a Saturday morning B-1B bomber training launch, doomed to playing catch up by a teenage cashier at the Seven Eleven who broke open his roll of nickels and scattered them on the floor while attempting to make change for $1.39 of rot gut coffee. As I rushed through Squadron Operations on my way to the jet that fall morning, I was perplexed by a strange note, neatly handwritten on the bottom of our mission flight schedule that read cryptically “usafa flyby tertiary.” Quickly turning to the daily operations officer – I inquired “What the hell does this mean?” “Nothing really,” he replied, “there is an Air Force football game we are supporting with a flyby in Colorado Springs, but both the primary and secondary aircraft have launched and are in the green – forget about it, the chances of you guys getting a call are next to nil.” Good enough for me, "let’s roll," I said to my intrepid crew mates. You can guess the rest . . . or at least part of it.

Half way through our low level route in western Kansas we got a call from a Flight Service Station on Guard frequency that asked we abort the route and contact our Command Post. The little voice in my head started his evil and foreboding “I told you so” chuckle. In short order, we were told that we were to proceed with greatest haste to make an 1158 Mountain Time flyover in accordance with the “wing flyover plan” – a document we had never heard of and did not possess. (We were later to learn that there were only two copies of said document.) These were minor hurdles for high steppers like us. With real time precision communications and precise execution, we swept the wings back and got clearance for a supersonic run to central Colorado, where if we could keep our speed up, we would arrive 40 seconds early – plenty of time to visually ID the stadium. To make a long story readable, we flew over the stadium in the wrong direction at the wrong altitude (not too high) and wrong airspeed (not too slow), and most importantly, wrong decibel level (not too quiet). Upon return to base, there was another note at the Ops desk that said simply “Major Kern, Call Wing Commander,” which led to a memorable and unpleasant conversation. To this day, I occasionally hear Falcon Fans remark of the day that “B-1 bomber did an insane flyby.” I never let on that I know the culprit. To hear the story told from ground level, cadets cheered, civilians screamed in fear, babies cried, and if I got the story correct from a third hand source, a few windows broke and a horse may have died off base. This was not cool – it was unprofessional – and it was directly the result of not comprehending the need for an actionable Plan C.

In a world ruled increasingly by dynamic change – Plan B is highly likely to become Plan A without much advance warning – and the word “tertiary” has real significance. Plan accordingly.