NASA looks to be getting about a half billion dollars less than what it anticipated for FY2007, depending on how Congress completes the year-long “joint funding resolution” that will replace the uncompleted appropriations bills left by the previous Congress. Aerospace Daily reports that Griffin, in an interview yesterday, said that the agency will seek to cut the lowest-priority programs it can find so that it can preserve funding for key exploration programs:
“I will do everything I can to keep Orion and Ares I on schedule,” he [Griffin] says. “That will be right behind keeping shuttle and station on track, and then after that we’ll fill up the bucket with our other priorities.”
So what could fall under the budget knife? “The ideal candidate is a fairly new, lower priority effort where not a lot of money has already been invested, and by stopping it now you can react and not have to spend future money that you know you’re not going to get,” Griffin told Aerospace Daily. There are already rumors that follow-on robotic lunar missions to Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter are in danger of cancellation. Could COTS be in danger? Future Mars and other science missions? One problem with that approach is that new programs don’t offer a lot of immediate cost savings, since they’re just starting to ramp up.
Griffin also spoke this morning at a Space Transportation Association breakfast. I wasn’t able to attend, but according to Space News [subscription required] Griffin said that Ares 1 remains the top procurement priority for NASA in 2007. Griffin also said that NASA is not looking at alternatives to the Ares 1, despite rumors to the contrary.
Unfortunately, Mr. Bush last night guaranteed that next year’s budget will be even worse. For better or worse, he probably also guaranteed the Democrats the Presidency in two years.
— Donald
Oh, for the better, make no mistake.
You can gurantee no new Centenial Challenges this year. I hope they can make a comeback next year.
As for Cots, I hope not, and I tend to doubt it, but I also wouldn’t take it for granted by any strech of the imagination.
Half a billion plus is a huge amount to make up in one year. That’s almost NASA’s entire annual aeronautics budget. Great to see that the ESAS plan has the margins to withstand the ups and downs of federal budgeting in a democracy without doing great damage to NASA’s other programs.
Taking tongue-out-of-cheek, it’s just terrible that Ares I is still Griffin’s top priority. It makes little sense to wipe out more unique NASA programs — lunar precursors, more robotic Mars cuts, whatever is left of extrasolar planet telescopes, whatever is left of microgravity research, other science cuts, or more aeronautics cuts — just so America can keep its fourth medium lift launch vehicle on schedule — a schedule with a four-year-plus gap that has little hope of retaining most Shuttle processing expertise. It makes even less sense with all the mass/performance issues and other technical problems Ares I is experiencing.
My advice would be to cancel Ares I, reapply most of the savings to a competitive crew to LEO (or CEV to LEO) service procurement, and use the rest to restore the cuts made last year to existing VSE programs (Mars, planet-hunting telescopes, prizes) and get a heavy-lift vehicle (Ares V, DIRECT, Atlas-derived, whatever) and some actual human exploration hardware underway before the next President takes office and cancels the whole Vision.
But I’m sure Griffin is getting lots of great advice from his inner circle of higher ups. (Inserting tongue back into cheek.) I mean, how can you go wrong with Horowitz (the same blue-suiter who thought that an air-started SSME would make for a great Ares upper stage), Dale (a technical neophyte who delivered a wonderfully detailed lunar base plan after a year of work by scores of NASA employees and international participants), and Hanley (a Shuttle operator who has demonstrated great expertise in managing the margins on early-stage development programs like Constellation).
What a wonderful way to start the new year at NASA…
“But I’m sure Griffin is getting lots of great advice from his inner circle of higher ups. (Inserting tongue back into cheek.) I mean, how can you go wrong with Horowitz (the same blue-suiter who thought that an air-started SSME would make for a great Ares upper stage), Dale (a technical neophyte who delivered a wonderfully detailed lunar base plan after a year of work by scores of NASA employees and international participants), and Hanley (a Shuttle operator who has demonstrated great expertise in managing the margins on early-stage development programs like Constellation).
What a wonderful way to start the new year at NASA…”
You forgot Cooke, whose years spent leading humans-to-Mars studies that were less innovative than those of one, lone, crazed LockMart engineer (Zubrin) obviously qualifies him to be the administrator of multiple, multi-billion projects.
And then there’s the other Cook on Ares. I mean, how can you not pass up someone who did such a good job selling every other flawed NASA propulsion concept during the 1990s to manage your flagship launch vehicle.
And don’t forget Griffin’s brilliant new advisor and former FEMA Chief of Staff during the Katrina debacle…
http://www.nasawatch.com/archives/2007/01/former_fema_dep.html#more
It does look very ugly from down here.
Is it just me or is Griffin’s STA speech from today just a lot of vague, contradictory, pointless rambling?
I liked his STA speech rolling out COTS over a year ago. Made lots of good points about the differences between government and commercial contracting, why the government needed to experiment with commercial practices, and how all that underpinned the COTS approach.
But in this speech, he seems to be trying to make an opposite point — that we should be satisfied with government practices because that’s just the way government is. It’s like he’s thrown up his hands and surrendered over something, but he doesn’t tell us what that something is. What are we supposed to take away from this — that it’s okay for our national space program to underperform? Thanks for the inspiration, Mr. Administrator. I’ll remember it when I’m writing my check to the IRS this April.
Worse, he seems to argue the opposite point yet again — that there are things that the government should turn over the private sector when the private sector is capable of providing those capabilities. But this seems to go against his strategy on Ares I. Reading this speech begs the question, “Well, then why, Mr. Administrator, are you asking the taxpayer to foot the entire bill to build yet another rocket in the same class as the Atlas/Delta EELVs (which were built using some commercial dollars) and that will compete with Falcon/Kistler (to be built using mostly commercial dollars with some NASA seed money).”
It’s like Griffin took a class in the role of government and federal policymaking long ago but has become confused and fuzzy on the concepts since.
Anyone else get the same messages (or lack thereof) or am I off base?
get the message
If anyone is actually interested, I’ve released my Delta V design into the public domain :
http://cosmic.lifeform.org/?p=250
http://cosmic.lifeform.org/?p=254
(Read More and Show Comments) and also here :
http://www.orbitersim.com/Forum/Default.aspx?g=posts&t=12177
The entire thread is amusing if you read it carefully. Have fun with it.
I’m working on an Orbiter SSTO toolkit, which I will release eventually, if I ever find the time.
(sigh)
Where is the collective outrage from this group.
The Democratic Party controlled Congress has opted not to do its job this year and pass a Fy2007 budget that would prevent this $500M shortfall. Instead they punted and focused on the “minimum wage”.
We get a minimum wage increase for everyone, everyone that is but the Tuna Workers in Samoa whose company is headquartered in San Francisco. Oh, that’s right, Nancy Pelosi comes from SF. It’s all clear now.
Oh, and Bush’s plan? If it is such a bad plan then the Democratic Party controlled Congress can simply vote not to fund it. I am waiting for that vote. Let’s see some Democratic Party leadership here. That way, all of NASA’s woes will be solved. Maybe once that actual 5-day work week that Hoyer promised actually happens (barring football games, wanna-be holidays, union hall meetings, self-congratulatory press conferences, etc.) they can have that vote. We’re waiting….
“Where is the collective outrage from this group.”
It’s focused on the very poor policy, program, and technical choices made and continuing to be made by NASA senior management (and the associated lack of credentials and/or past performance among some of those managers). See the earlier posts in this thread.
“The Democratic Party controlled Congress has opted not to do its job this year and pass a Fy2007 budget that would prevent this $500M shortfall.”
I’m not a big supporter of either party, but the FY 2007 budget debacle does not lie at the feet of the Dems. It was the Republican-controlled Congress that failed to get a FY 2007 budget passed before the Dems took control. The Republicans had a whole year to do so and failed.
“We get a minimum wage increase for everyone, everyone that is but the Tuna Workers in Samoa whose company is headquartered in San Francisco. Oh, that’s right, Nancy Pelosi comes from SF. It’s all clear now.”
I’m not sure what this has to do with the price of tea in China, but that’s never stopped irrational partisan sniping…
“Oh, and Bush’s plan? If it is such a bad plan then the Democratic Party controlled Congress can simply vote not to fund it.”
The Dems are about to make such a vote in the FY 2007 continuing resolution. That’s why NASA is scrambling to make up a half-billion-plus dollar shortfall. This is the same boat that nearly every other federal department and agency is in after the Republicans failed to pass their FY 2007 budgets.
“I am waiting for that vote. Let’s see some Democratic Party leadership here.”
You’re already seeing the Democratic leadership roll back the Bush Administration’s human space flight plans. There will be a $500 million shortfall in Constellation in FY 2007, and the new House Science chair is promising more rebalancing of NASA’s activities away from human space flight and towards science and technology in FY 2008.
“That way, all of NASA’s woes will be solved.”
NASA’s problems are largely of its own making and can be laid at the feet of ESAS and decisions made by Griffin and Horowitz since. As many other folks have pointed out in many other posts on this site, NASA has hung an albatross around its own neck called Ares I. Setting all the technical problems emerging about the Shaft aside, it’s a huge policy, programmatic, and budgetary blunder to waste so many years and billions of dollars building yet another medium-lift LEO launch vehicle when the United States already has two underutilized vehicles in the stable and another one or two on the way. With so many dollars being poured into the Shaft, there’s little to no budget flexibility at NASA to pursue actual human exploration, especially when the vagaries of American politics produce a one-year hiccup in funding. As FY 2007 is proving, ESAS is the very definition of an unsustainable civil space exploration plan.
We all knew the Bush Administration was only going to be around until 2008, at best, and that NASA needed to get the Congress and the White House locked into actual exploration hardware (such as a heavy lift vehicle) before Bush left office. But instead, by reinventing the same wheel that Atlas and Delta already provide and that Falcon (and maybe Kistler) probably will provide in the not-too-distant future, NASA has wasted and is continuing to waste the golden opportunity that the Bush Administration handed the agency in the form of the Vision.
Although no one could have predicted the Democratic takeover of Congress two years ago, the fact remains that NASA’s implementation plan (ESAS) does not live up to the standards set by the VSE of being resilient to the changing winds of American politics and sustainable over many Congresses and Administrations. As it stands now, Ares I development is going to get stretched out even longer, more robotic exploration programs (lunar, Mars, telescopes, etc.) are going to get cut further, and no actual human exploration hardware will be in development by the time the next President comes into office — making it very easy for him (or her) to cancel everything in the Vision after Ares I (i.e., no Ares V, no LSAM, etc.). ESAS and the Shaft are reducing NASA to a LEO trucking company, instead of the human and robotic space exploration agency the Vision intended to transform NASA into.
This is not a Democratic or Republican issue — it’s just very poor execution on the part of NASA leadership after President Bush handed the agency the opportunity of a lifetime.
“Maybe once that actual 5-day work week that Hoyer promised actually happens (barring football games, wanna-be holidays, union hall meetings, self-congratulatory press conferences, etc.) they can have that vote. We’re waiting….”
Um, yeah…
Outrage is fine. I just like to keep the outrage focused where it belongs — on the poor NASA decisionmaking that led to this mess, not on political bickering about topics that have no relevance to the nation’s space program.
The problem still remains as to how we can repair the mess. I feel that any new human rated launch vehicle, including the Stick, is basically going to reproduce the capabilities of our existing EELVs, and not necessarily deliver any radical changes in operations and cost. A lot of these things are fixed by physics and technology. The Stick basically is a step backwards, we all recognize that. What we want to do is move forward. Thus it is imperative that either NASA and/or private industry human rate the EELVs by putting capsules on them as fast as is physically and technologically possible.
Let’s try economics. I am under the impression that the Russians are turning away Soyuz passengers. If that is the case, they must either increase production, or raise prices, or both. I already see this happening over there.
Rather than increasing production in the form of new EELVs, we need to put the EELVs we have into production, since we have no customers. It’s called competition. I utterly fail to see how the Stick is going to compete with the Soyuz.
Any way we look at it, we need to put capsules on the EELVs. I have offered another complementary strategy. We can use our SSMEs to pursue SSTO and stage and a half scenarios with on orbit refurbishment, retrofit and engine return, with the Delta IV (the Delta V), in order to provide real life experience in decreasing launch costs, streamlining operational procedures and developing new more sustainable launch strategies.
NASA could do this, but I would prefer private industry to do it, as they indeed are more isolated and immune to the whims of incompetent legislative and executive branches, and the apathy of an uncaring constituency.
Ahhh… it just gets better and better at NASA Headquarters…
http://wonkette.com/politics/fema/bush-administration-incompetence-to-expand-scope-past-atmosphere-228325.php
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Hi,
Look at this amazing “mix” of a Bigelow module and an Orion capsule!!!
http://www.gaetanomarano.it/articles/016_BigelowOrion.html
Gaetano
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I don’t really understand why people are surprised or outraged here. This seems like a familiar pattern:
+ put forth bold vision
+ badly underestimate funding and resources required
+ fail to take into account larger budget realities
This sounds normal for this administration. We’ve certainly seen this elsewhere.
I remember how Bush and O’Keefe said three years ago that funding the plan would mean only modest cuts elsewhere within the budget. It’s not clear why anyone really took that seriously. There was a lot of wishful thinking on the part of supporters of this plan. Or they just didn’t care if other parts of NASA got cut deeply.
O’Keefe didn’t plan on doing any booster development, the budgetary impact of CEV development would have been modest. Especially so since early industry consensus on the capsule was that it should mass less than 8 tonnes, easy to inject into L1 with an unmodified A-V or D-IV heavy.
The only reason the budget is in trouble is that a certain faux-vulcan (we all know he’s a romulan spy) decided we needed a brand new 25T booster, and then prescribed a 25T capsule to justify it.