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CBO report on NASA exploration plan

Late last week, while most of official Washington was on vacation or at the RNC (or both), the Congressional Budget Office released its analysis of the proposed budget for the Vision for Space Exploration. This is a pretty extensive analysis of the costs reported by NASA for the vision through 2020, and how these costs might increase. I’ve only had time to skim through a report, but here are a few key points:

  • NASA’s own estimates for the vision calculate that returning humans to the Moon will cost $63.8 billion through 2020. This includes $24.7 billion for the CEV and $17.9 billion to develop a heavy-lift launch capability. Robotic missions to the Moon and Mars will cost an additional $29 billion through 2020.
  • Based on an analysis of historic cost growth in past NASA programs, the CBO estimates that the exploration program will cost $32 billion more than planned through 2020. A separate analysis, using costs of analogous programs, like Apollo, resulted in cost growth between $36-61 billion through 2020, depending on the complexity of the robotic precursor missions.
  • Using the “go as you can pay” approach, the CBO report examined what would happen if the projected budget was maintained and the schedule allowed to slip. The result was a delay of between three and seven years in the planned 2020 manned lunar landing.
  • Alternatively, the cost increases can be accommodated by cutting between 24-46 percent of the budget of all non-Moon/Mars science programs, or by cutting all Mars robotic missions and trimming 6-29 percent of other science programs.

One thing I did not notice the report address (and perhaps I overlooked it) is the size of the reserves in NASA’s proposed budgets. If the budget estimates already include significant margins for overruns, it would mitigate many of the problems the CBO report revealed, although I would be surprised if it completely eliminated all of them.

As Congress returns this week, this should make interesting fodder for the debates on NASA’s FY05 budget.

9 comments to CBO report on NASA exploration plan

  • Anonymous

    Regarding the issue of reserves, you have to understand what “reserves” usually means in government budgets–they are not money that is sitting around to be used for overruns. As it was explained to me, reserves are usually allocated for lots of little extras that the programmers simply do not want to put in the main budget, they are not backup funds to be used when you run into problems. In other words, if your main project overruns, you cannot borrow from the reserves. The CBO report takes this into account.

  • Mark Zinthefer

    So that looks like about $6 billion per year. Isn’t that about what the shuttle costs?

  • Anonymous

    “So that looks like about $6 billion per year. Isn’t that about what the shuttle costs?”

    No. Shuttle is about half of that.

  • Dogsbd

    All esimates I’ve ever seen on shuttle cost per year have ran 4-5 billion, don’t believe I’ve ever seen it esimated as low as 3 billion.

  • Anonymous

    The original NASA FY04 Shuttle budget for FY04 was $3,986,400,000 for five shuttle flights and some development work ($96.8M goes to the latter). See http://ifmp.nasa.gov/codeb/budget2004/24-Space_Shuttle.pdf.

  • Mark Zinthefer

    So $2 billion more than keeping the shuttle. How much will be saved if we get out of ISS? Has to be more than the other $2 billion.

    One thing I’m wondering: Why are they saying it will cost this much and take this long now? Didn’t it take much less time in the 60s? Wasn’t it cheaper too? Does anyone know what Mercury/Gemini/Apollo cost in today’s dollars? It had to have been less. I’d love to see NASA’s reasoning.

  • Arthur Smith

    Mark, this isn’t a repeat of Apollo, it’s establishment of long-term man-tended or inhabited structures on the surface, and actually learning to make use of lunar resources. At least I assume that’s the program that’s being analyzed here. So comparison to Apollo isn’t necessarily valid. That said, it does seem a bit on the high side.

  • Anonymous

    “One thing I’m wondering: Why are they saying it will cost this much and take this long now? Didn’t it take much less time in the 60s? Wasn’t it cheaper too?”

    Perhaps it would help if you actually bothered to read the CBO report. There is a helpful bar chart on page 18 that compares costs.

  • Harold LaValley

    The report and its figures can also be used to hamper any future spending request by Nasa for new projects, since it sort of establishes base line figures for each type.