NASA

Tweaking the NASA budget

Space News reports Monday that NASA is taking advantage of the authority granted by Congress to redirect funding within its 2005 budget to keep some key programs funded. Among other things, NASA reshuffled funding to provide $52 million for the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter program, short of the $70 million NASA originally requested but far above the $10 million that Congress allocated for it in the omnibus budget bill. To pay for it and other funding changes, NASA is cutting $100 million from the shuttle program by canceling several planned long-term upgrades; small spacecraft programs also suffered some cuts. While Congress approved $291 million to fund a Hubble repair mission, NASA is currently planning to spend only $175 million on that effort. NASA also lost nearly $130 million from an across-the-board 0.8-percent rescission applied to all government agencies “before the ink was dry on the 2005 Omnibus Appropriations Act”. (The Space News article includes a link to a spreadsheet with the details of the funding plan.)

The operating plan that NASA has crafted has been submitted to Congress for its review, and NASA is withholding public comment on the plan until Congress provides its feedback. Congressional sources told Space News that they are concerned that the plan does not describe how NASA will pay for $400 million worth of earmarks added by Congress to the budget.

23 comments to Tweaking the NASA budget

  • Dwayne Day

    I am somewhat surprised that NASA has used its power to reshuffle money to add it to a program (Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter) that Congress specifically _cut_ in the first place. Unless this is carefully cleared with Congress, it seems likely to anger people there.

    It was my understanding that the extra authority granted to NASA to move its funding around was specifically to enable the agency to meet unexpected funding shortfalls, primarily in the shuttle RTF budget. Under normal circumstances, there are clear federal statutes that prevent agencies from shuffling funds to canceled or cut programs. I believe the most relevant one is the Anti-Deficiency Act. The Act was passed to prevent the President (or members of the executive branch) from defying Congress’ budget powers by shifting money into projects that Congress had not appropriated money for in the first place. Congress apparently granted NASA some exceptions to the Act, but probably did not intend for NASA to contradict congressional intentions. Perhaps the agency now believes that it can make a better case for Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter funding than it did originally.

    We’ll see if Congress approves the agency putting money back in an account that Congress previously cut.

  • James

    $450 million of earmarks / $16.2 billion budget
    = 2.8%

    $450 million, 2.8%, is a lot of earmarks.

  • Nathan Horsley

    Dwayne,

    The Antideficiency Act (as codified at 31 USC 1341) does keep agencies from spending more money than has been appropriated for a particular program, or entering into obligations for which money has not been appropriated, but it doesnt keep an agency from using appropriated funds for whatever they are authorized to do, so long as the funds are designated for agency use and not earmarked for something specific. The situation here is that an unusual amount of the NASA budget was not earmarked specifically, and thus there was an unusual degree of discretion given to NASA leadership in determining how funds would be used.

    Congress doesnt have to approve NASA to use the funds that were appropriated for the NASA budget, but not earmarked for a specific program. At this point, Congress can only influence the spending of unearmarked appropriated funds by passing specific legislation. Since this would be difficult politically, it is more likely that they would exert pressure through hinting at how NASA actions might influence their decisions regarding the budget for next year. However, I doubt this will be a major threat since my guess is that Congress cut earmarks for particular programs and then gave significant discretion in the overall NASA budget in order to allow the VSE to be implemented (and to put control over how to implement the VSE with the people who know the most about it) while also appearing to protect their constituencies.

  • Dwayne Day

    Mr. Horsley wrote:
    “Congress doesnt have to approve NASA to use the funds that were appropriated for the NASA budget, but not earmarked for a specific program.”

    Apparently Congress in this case has to approve NASA’s moving of funds. That’s why NASA submitted it to Congress for their approval.

    And in the case of LRO, Congress specifically _cut_ the budget by a substantial amount, and included language in the bill explaining that they had done this. That is a pretty clear message. So, because Congress only appropriated a smaller amount for LRO, if NASA puts more money into it, the agency would be in violation of the Act. It is impossible to believe that Congress asserted its will by cutting that budget and then has no problem with the agency defying its will by putting money back into the program. They will certainly have to negotiate this. (Of course, it is possible, even probable, that there is more going on here than we outsiders know about. Maybe not everyone in the relevant congressional committees agreed with the LRO cut and so this is a way of bypassing the opponents. Or maybe the opponents have changed their minds.)

    This also harkens back to the fight over the DC-X in the early 1990s. In that case I believe the reverse was happening–Congress had specifically appropriated money to DoD for the DC-X program, and the DoD (for reasons that I don’t think have ever been adequately explained) refused to spend it. This was considered a violation of the Anti-Deficiency Act as well.

  • Arthur Smith

    Budget vs. spending question…

    I know NASA’s had accounting problems, but I’m having trouble just keeping up with all the different sets of numbers involved. So far we have:
    * What was proposed to Congress by the agency (president’s budget) – and here already there are many sets of numbers since they propose budgets going several years forward
    * What Congress finally approved (budget authorization) for this year
    * This new “operating plan”
    * What will actually be spent

    Any other sets of numbers we ought to look at? Comparing things year to year can be very confusing with all these – especially as the next budget proposal is likely coming out in another few weeks, before we even know what’s going to be spent this year.

  • Dwayne Day

    The Space News article is now online at:

    http://www.space.com/spacenews/businessmonday_050110.html

    It also indicates that the JIMO mission has been renamed Prometheus 1 and that it may be on the chopping block. This is not that surprising, considering that JIMO is a VERY expensive mission.

  • Frank Johnson

    At the risk of hijacking this thread, does anyone care to speculate what the departure of Mr. O’Keefe will mean for nuclear electric propulsion efforts at NASA? From my perpective it seemed that O’Keefe was NEP’s most vocal proponent, publically championing the technology even before the VSE was announced. Is there anyone else at NASA willing to speak as loudly as Mr. O’Keefe on this topic? Alternatively, are the views of the potential replacement administrators publicly known?

  • This is not that surprising, considering that JIMO is a VERY expensive mission.

    Not to mention that it had morphed into something that required a heavy lifter, all by itself.

  • Dwayne Day

    I wrote:
    “This is not that surprising, considering that JIMO is a VERY expensive mission.”

    Mr. Simberg responded:
    “Not to mention that it had morphed into something that required a heavy lifter, all by itself.”

    As I understand it, this was due to two things: the weight, and the desire/need to boost the reactor out of orbit as quickly as possible to avoid placing a nuclear reactor in earth orbit. Also, I believe that there was concern that the ion propulsion system would not weather the Van Allen Belts very well.

    Naturally, a heavy-lift rocket is expensive, adding at least a billion dollars to the mission cost. But even assuming two EELV’s, the launch cost is going to be well over $500 million.

  • Dwayne said “Naturally, a heavy-lift rocket is expensive, adding at least a billion dollars to the mission cost. But even assuming two EELV’s, the launch cost is going to be well over $500 million.”

    I assume you mean an existing US heavy launcher, as opposed to the mythical one supposedly needed for the exploration initiative? If the latter, a billion dollars seems an order of magnitude too low for the NASA development cost given that the Air Force started out expecting to spend $2 billion just to develop EELV.

  • John Malkin

    Is any rocket cheap? Being heavy lift doesn’t make it more expensive per pound to launch. You would need to compare launching expenses of launching two smaller EELV vs. a single EELV. I would think the overhead for launch services for the second EELV would make heavy EELV cheaper for the same payload. This assuming the payload could be launched on separate EELVs. Any space vehicle including EELV should be usable by more than NASA for VSE. I think Ariane is a good example of a diverse launch capability and proof the one rocket is better than two for the same payloads. The other problem of course is there is no definition of payload size at this time for VSE.

    The U.S. needs a modular and diverse approach to space transportation. The space shuttles biggest lesson was relying on one vehicle for everything.

  • There’s no doubt that heavy launch gives the lowest payload cost per pound. But factoring in development cost, and given future demand for such a launcher, does it really win out?

  • Dwayne Day

    Mr. Parkin wrote:
    “If the latter, a billion dollars seems an order of magnitude too low for the NASA development cost given that the Air Force started out expecting to spend $2 billion just to develop EELV.”

    I assumed that any reader would naturally assume I was referring to the “mythical HLV” that NASA has discussed, and which is automatically included in NASA JIMO/Prometheus-1 planning. In that case, assume that the development cost is paid by the Vision for Space Exploration, and that Prometheus-1 is only charged the cost of an additional vehicle.

    As of one year ago, NASA internal estimates for developing an HLV ranged from around $7-12 billion, depending upon which vehicle was selected (most shuttle-derived vehicles were on the lower end of that scale). Each vehicle was expected to cost at least $1 billion apiece.

    I believe that an Aviation Week article last week indicated that a Delta IV Heavy costs around $300 million apiece. To this you would have to add the cost of any upper stage necessary to boost out of orbit. So if you buy two of them (assuming that you could do the mission with two Heavy EELVs), it costs at least $600+ million.

    However, NASA has been quiet about heavy lift launch vehicle development since last spring, and Congress has noticed this and asked NASA to explain what options are being considered.

  • Who would have thought

  • …this was due to two things: the weight, and the desire/need to boost the reactor out of orbit as quickly as possible to avoid placing a nuclear reactor in earth orbit.

    Desire, not need. Apparently their desire for this overcame their desire for the program.

  • Dwayne Day

    Mr. Simberg wrote:
    “Desire, not need.”

    What was this requirement (no orbiting nuclear reactors) based upon? Was it a safety concern? (By extension, a public relations concern.) Why do you feel that it was an illegitimate requirement?

  • What was this requirement (no orbiting nuclear reactors) based upon? Was it a safety concern?

    No.

    (By extension, a public relations concern.)
    Yes, but one that could have been circumvented with some education (just as occurred with RTGs).

    Why do you feel that it was an illegitimate requirement?

    Because it’s not a safety concern. There’s no danger of having a reactor in orbit until the reactor is activated, and that can wait until after the system is assembled in LEO and boosted to a C3 of zero with an upper stage (though it would be much better, and also perfectly safe, to activate in orbit and use it to boost itself to escape). A heavy lifter is not necessary.

  • Dogsbd

    >>>> There’s no danger of having a reactor in orbit until the reactor is activated,

    Maybe not an actual danger, but a perceived danger in the minds of some. And in this case, a perceived danger is enough to cause incalculable hindrance to the program. Were NASA to announce plans to park a nuclear reactor in Earth orbit, regardless of the safety protocols used, the outcry from certain groups would be deafening and certain members of Congress would listen. And that could very easily kill the program.

  • Those groups should read the history books. Even back in 1986 there were about 50 nuclear reactors in orbit and 8 had reentered, including one that spread its core over parts of Canada:

    http://www.animatedsoftware.com/spacedeb/canadapl.htm

  • John Malkin

    Many of those vocal groups aren’t interested in fact but rather anything that would move their cause forward. This is where strong politicians standing against the noise can progress America in the right direction.

  • Dwayne Day

    Mr. Parkin wrote:
    “Even back in 1986 there were about 50 nuclear reactors in orbit and 8 had reentered, including one that spread its core over parts of Canada.”

    How, exactly, is that an argument that will win people to your cause?

  • I’m not trying to win people to some particular side of the debate here, but I do believe that – for better or worse – an unvarnished historical perspective is important in forming sound and useful opinion.

  • John Malkin

    In the NASA update meeting today, O’Keefe and Ready talked about how Prometheus is moving forward but they didn’t talk about JIMO but that they are looking at ways to use the technology in different applications. They were very vague.