The change in control of Congress compels Florida Today to warn NASA that it has to stick to its budget if the Vision for Space Exploration is to survive. Otherwise, the paper warns, the agency risks “losing support in the new Congress where Democrats, and many Republicans, will not tolerate cost overruns.” The editorial doesn’t really address, though, how much that risk has increased now that Democrats control both houses of Congress, since some Republicans had already expressed concerns about cost overruns. Still, it’s reasonable to expect Congress to subject NASA and the VSE to more scrutiny over the next two years.
The editorial claims that “NASA will need at least $230 billion to construct the Orion fleet, two new families of moon rockets and other hardware to land astronauts on the lunar surface.” That seems awfully high until you realize that the GAO report that figure comes from is estimating the cost through FY2025, seven years after the first scheduled human mission to the lunar surface. (The same report notes that the cost estimate through FY2018 is $122 billion.)
Florida Today, though, does have faith in NASA’s leadership to keep the costs under control. “NASA Administrator Michael Griffin says the agency can live within its moon budget, and if anyone can make it happen, he’s that person.”
I don’t know if FT is right about this. Won’t tolerate cost overruns? Doesn’t seem to mesh well with recent history. ISS is wwwaaaaayyyy behind schedule and overbudget. But, it kept surviving. Given the need to retire shuttle, it’s hard to believe that Congress would shut the program down. Especially given the number of jobs it generates in various districts and states.
That being said, it would probably behoove the new Democratic majority to hold some hearings about the viability of the VSE architecture. It was clear over a year ago that adapting shuttle hardware wouldn’t be that cheap. NASA has been grappling with problems in the SRB derived launcher since at least spring. It’s underpowered and had (still has?) serious problems with stability. And there are serious issues with the recurring cost of the moon missions.
The problem NASA might face is that the Democrats might be more inclined to restore programs the administration has cut in order to fund VSE. That would exacerbate problems if VSE costs rise over the next decade. With budget deficits still high, there’s not a whole lot of extra money to spend on NASA.
NASA living to a fixed budget ??? Year after year after year ???
We choose not to do these things because they are easy, but because they are haard, very haard – JFK.
But there seems no alternative.