I haven’t had a chance to fully digest yesterday’s House Science Committee hearing about the effects of the 2007 budget proposal on NASA science programs (I’m on travel at the moment); you can read the opening statements of the witnesses as well as Reps. Boehlert and Calvert, and press releases from the full committee and Democratic Caucus. At first glance there are few surprises here: committee members, both Republicans and Democrats, and scientists are concerned about the cutbacks in NASA science programs in the FY07 budget; Mary Cleve, NASA associate administrator for space science, was virtually alone in defending the budget, saying that NASA planned to review some of the proposed changes.
Incidentally, after the hearing NASA formally cancelled the Dawn asteroid mission, which had been under review since last fall because of cost growth and technical issues. This may trigger another round of anguish among scientists about NASA’s commitment to space science.
I can’t work up much sympathy for projects that are cancelled after cost overruns. Budget discipline requires making examples of some offenders.
Um, yeah. Like Shuttle, station, etc. etc. Except those weren’t cancelled. Unfortunately it’s pretty hard to do any finger pointing re NASA budget discipline. Should you want to routinely make examples of offenders, you wouldn’t have any program left.
Um, yeah. Like Shuttle, station, etc. etc. Except those weren’t cancelled.
The exceptions that prove the rule.
In this case, even I think Dawn was the wrong mission to cancel. (However, before I go on, I should mention that I am a stockholder in Orbital Sciences, the spacecraft’s manufacturer.) Greater knowledge of the asteroid belt is vital for the human future in space. Vesta may be the source of many metal-baring asteroids that make it to Earth’s surface, and thus of other Earth-approaching asteroids; it’s the source of a valuable resource that is potentially exploitable in the near term. And Ceres may have a very complex ice-and-carbon geology in a far more accessible body that the giant planets’ moons.
— Donald
Um, yeah. Like Shuttle, station, etc. etc. Except those weren’t cancelled.
I agree. The Shuttle should be cancelled now. Since that is politically improbable, if there are any problems or significant delays with the upcoming flight, that opportunity should be taken to cancel the remaining missions. The science hubub may help provide the political will to do that.
The $5 billion per year for five years saved by cancelling the Shuttle should be split roughly evenly between alternative access to the Space Station, restoring and expanding the science budget, and restoring the VSE to include the methane engines and a faster development schedule.
However, I agree that there is very little chance of this happening.
— Donald
The trouble with Shuttle and Station as exceptions that prove the rule is that they are both obscenely overbudget, and a small fraction of their overruns could keep missions like DAWN afloat for years.
Being obscenely overbudget doesn’t necessarily mean that they are obscenely overvalued (I won’t go there!) But it does lead one to believe that by punishing DAWN you aren’t going to fix the procurement deficiencies that allow the whole aerospace industry to get into situations like this. To wit, this isn’t a DAWN problem (and hardly even just a NASA problem), but something much bigger.
We interrupt the tiresome discussion of “Whither the Shuttle”? with the following news bulletin: Apollo on Steroids is morphing!
Dr. Mickey Griffin’s mouse club wants to use a modernized J-2 engine for their “new” second stage.
J-2 engine — what Saturn used. They might as well also build some Saturn V first stages.
NASA Internal Charts: ESAS Update: Accelerating Lunar Missions aka “Lunar Sooner”
STATUS REPORT
Date Released: Monday, February 27, 2006
Source: NASA HQ
…
# New accelerated approach:
* CLV: 5 segment RSRM / 1 J-2X upperstage.
* CaLV: 5 segment RSRM / 5 SSME core stage / 1 J-2X EDS stage.
* Requires development of a single upperstage engine, a single low cost SSME derivative for the CaLV core stage and a single solid rocket booster stage.
* As documented in ESAS, this concept achieves similar loss of mission / loss of crew estimates to that of the 4 segment /1 SSME concept.
Definitions for the J-2 engines:
o J-2: original LOx/H2 engine used on the Saturn V 2nd and 3rd stages
o J-2S: simplified J-2 developed as a replacement engine for the J-2 at the end of the Apollo Program
o J-2X: Nomenclature for modern day replacement for the J-2/J-2S
Summary Advantages of Accelerated Approach
Reduces overall risk to the Constellation program.
* Addressing critical systems sooner.
* Eliminates the top two ESAS identified risks (LOx/Methane propulsion and SSME air start) and addresses another risk earlier (J-2 development).
Lower overall Constellation costs to 1st human lunar landing
* Reduced post-2010 funding ramp-up.
Lower overall integrated risk to a 1st human lunar landing.
* Lower overall development risk for CEV: use current propulsion technology and eliminate dedicated unpressurized cargo delivery vehicle.
o Single upperstage engine development (J-2X).
+ More robust upperstage engine cycle for altitude start / capable of restart – proven in Saturn.
o Single solid rocket booster development (5 segment RSRM).
o Single core engine development (expendable SSME).
* More ‘balanced’ engine production rate requirement between J-2X and SSME.
Maintains safety and reliability projections with significant reliability growth with evolution from proven systems.
http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewsr.html?pid=19768
The committee was a setup with Cleve the sacrificial lamb to be slaughtered by the others, both on and off the “expert” panel. The political games ran far and deep; Cleve clearly had her brief from Griffin to restate the budget, whereas the others wanted to reshape NASA’s decisions for their own purposes. Griffin is playing it tight, he’s got what he wants for ESAS and he’s leaving the scientists to press for their slice of pork. You can’t please anyone all the time.
Heh heh. Reshaping NASA’s decisions for their own purposes, eh? VSE specifically includes extrasolar planet detection. TPF killed. SIM pushed out in to the middle of the next decade. Now whose purposes are we talking about? Those damned scientists. They just want to uphold the NASA strategic plan.
You can’t please anyone all of the time, but science decisions made without formal consultation with the science community (yep, that’s what happens when you remove all the science advisory committees) is a slap in the face, and kind of dumb.
I pity Mike Griffin. He’s between a rock and a hard place. He’s been told to go to the Moon by 2018, told to keep shuttle and station longer than he wants to, and told to make do with a budget that he KNOWS is insufficient. He does not have what he wants by a long shot.
And yes, Cleave was a sacrificial lamb, but I’ve never seen such a lamb basically shoot itself in the head. She was awesomely unprepared for that hearing.
I pity Mike Griffin. He’s between a rock and a hard place. He’s been told to go to the Moon by 2018, told to keep shuttle and station longer than he wants to, and told to make do with a budget that he KNOWS is insufficient. He does not have what he wants by a long shot.
But the essence of being a good NASA head is to allocate limited funds wisely and to tell the truth if demands are unrealistic.
Griffin is doing neither, so why feel sorry for him?
And yes, Cleave was a sacrificial lamb, but I’ve never seen such a lamb basically shoot itself in the head. She was awesomely unprepared for that hearing.
Affirmative action hires in mgmt. positions are another of NASA’s diverse problems.
Why is it that when funding gets cut for scientific missions it seems that the ONLY option that supporters of the project use is to whine to Congress on how “NASA did them wrong!”? I don’t mean to debate whether or not a mission should be cut only that there are other sources of money beside the US treasury.
Can the mission be changed so that universities or research labs will be more willing invest in the project without endangering the original mission? Are there commercial entities that would be interested in the information that would be generated?
The DAWN mission may be a great example for what I would call “creative funding”. With only $40 million needed to complete it and $10 million needed to mothball it. NASA should be using that $10 million to keep the project alive while the agency and other stakeholders find the additional funding outside the government.
James Muncy wrote an excellent article for Ad Astra in which he suggests opening the ISS to business development. This is something that Donald has been arguing in this space and other places for as long as I can remember. Muncy says that we should stop thinking of the ISS as a space station and start thinking of it as a business park. He calls for a quasi-government “Port Authority”, owned by the partners, that would encourage and govern business activity on the station helping to defer some of the upkeep of the station. Business activity there would also help create private cargo and human delivery and retrieval. You can argue all the things that the ISS is not but it dose have one big advantage; it’s there today.
What I’m saying is that we should be searching for alternate funding for all of our missions, unmanned and manned.
Thanks for the kind words, Mr. Earl. I agree with you about Dawn. If “only” thirty million dollars is needed (the difference between storage and flight), this would appear an opportune time to look at alternative financing, especially since this mission has minor but significant resource potential. However, this situation also points out space sciences’ special status. Thirty million may be trump change to a space endeavor, but it’s real money to most scientists and would probably have little chance in a truly open competition with, say, NSF-funded projects.
I would argue that space science and exploration should have higher priorities than other sciences, however, it points out the disingenuousness of planetary scientists who state that human exploration is “too expensive” while automated space science is justified on its results. Their are many scientists who would question why their laboratory budgets are being cut while we’re “wasting” $30 million completing an asteroid mission. When we’ve got AIDS and Bird Flu and “people starving in Africa,” who gives a damn about asteroids (or Saturn or Mars), anyway.
Recall that SpaceDev (in which I own stock) started out proposing a commercial Near Earth Asteroid science mission. The model was to build the spacecraft as a utility and market resources to experimenters. It went nowhere, presumably because no one out there was willing to cough up the money their experiments really cost.
Maybe it’s time to revisit this idea, especially with a nearly completed spacecraft. Split the remaining cost between the institutions that have experiments on the spacecraft and find out just how much people really want to fly these experiments.
— Donald
Finally got around to reading all the statements and watching all 2hours and 20 minutes of testimony. Couple of comments:
1) Mary Cleave actually handled herself very well and came off as prepared. I just do not see where Doug and David are coming from. She’s in a very tough position to be sure, one I would not want to be in right now. She knew it was obvious that she as going to be taking a beating going into this,
2) I am encouraged personally that so many reps were behind the completion of Sophia. I have to agree with the sentiments of one of the reps in that it just makes no sense when we are looking at cancelling a project that 90% complete. Yes, as Dr. Cleave has stated it is close to 50% over budget, but it only needs about $100 to finish and we as a country need to show our international partners that we can complete a cooperative program with them.
3) It is also obvious as others have stated that what is happening here is a pitting of the human side of NASA vurses the science side of NASA. As was pointed out by the several on the panel, what is really at stake here is the long term problem in what is NASA’s priority. Last year they slashed aeronautics for manned endeavors, this year science. What is left next year?
The more I listen to this the more I am convinced that a conversation needs to start that science be removed from NASA. The way I see it, earth (budget $1.5B) and sun(budget $680M) science can easily goto NOAA. They already have GOES and a case can be made very easily that but earth and helio science can fall under this charter. It may even be worthwhile to move all of Goddard to NOAA.
As for astrophysics (budget $1.5B) and planetary science (budget $1.6), these are more difficult. There are two alternative choices I see here, either moving them under the NSF or put into a seperate agency similar to the Department of Energy to coordinate their research. I personally like the NSF route as it the NSF already has a budget in 2003 of $3.5B that includes funding four FFRDC with missions based in astronomy. Adding JPL and possibly Langely to that list would fit their charter nicely. The DoE route is also attractive too but I have yet to put enough of my thoughts together to write on that yet.
Mary Cleave actually handled herself very well? Let’s see. This is the person that Boehlert had to scold to finish up because time was passing and she had not really gotten to the point. This is the person who, judging from her perplexed reaction to the other testimony presented, didn’t really understand what the science community was worried about. R&A for example. Well, if you all feel that way, she said, we’d better go and look at it again. She didn’t need a congressional hearing to learn that.
I too am encouraged about SOFIA (as it is properly spelled), though the issue is that SOFIA has been 90% complete for quite a while. The question is whether cost and schedule even remain realistic, and partly whether the science justification remains strong. A difficult issue with SOFIA that should not be ignored is that ops costs are essentially the same as development costs. Unlike space missions, in which the cost curve drops sharply after launch, SOFIA will keep costing a lot.
Get science out of NASA? Well, sure, that would clear the way for footprints in dirt. But seriously, are you suggesting that as a way of doing better science, or just as a way of disposing of science? If the former, then it certainly isn’t obvious to me that it would work, even if you tranferred the science portion of the NASA budget over to those other agencies.
I have to say that Ryan’s comments here half-convinced me about the viability of an indepent science mission, in spite of what I wrote in comment to a later post. If scientists are really sure they want that, than I have no problem with it. I only have a problem with significant reductions for human spaceflight.
— Donald