Space News [subscription required] reported this afternoon that the Bush Administration will request $17.3 billion for NASA in its FY2008 budget proposal, scheduled to be released Monday morning. There are no other details about the budget beyond that topline figure in the article. The budget would be about a 3 percent increase over its original FY07 budget proposal, but a much larger increase over what NASA will likely end up with after Congress finishes work on the joint funding resolution.
Well. So much for the sloppy accusations from some that the Bush administration was going to casually abandon the Vision for Space Exploration. It’s pretty clear that if manned space exploration is going to get killed there will only be one set of fingerprints on the knife, Democratic Party fingerprints.
“So much for the sloppy accusations from some that the Bush administration was going to casually abandon the Vision for Space Exploration.”
Assuming the Space News number is accurate, the implications for exploration are still not known. We’ll have to see the budget details, especially regarding exploration, to confirm whether or not the topline NASA budget is being driven by something else and whether in 2008 the White House has stopped sliding on its original budget commitments to the VSE, as it has in prior years.
“It’s pretty clear that if manned space exploration is going to get killed”
The extermination of the U.S. human space flight program is not in the cards. At a minimum, some combination of ISS/STS through around 2010, followed by a stretched out Orion/Ares I servicing ISS, is the most likely scenario. The big question is what happens after the next election to the rest of the ESAS plan (Ares V, LSAM, etc.), especially with a new White House coming into office in January 2009.
“there will only be one set of fingerprints on the knife, Democratic Party fingerprints.”
Assuming the exploration elements of the ESAS plan do get the axe when the next White House comes into office (and I think that’s the most likely scenario regardless of whether the next President is Democrat or Republican), most of the blame will lies at Griffin’s feet for his politically unsustainable ESAS plan and choosing the development of intensive LEO trucks over getting actual exploration hardware underway.
Any of the remaining blame will be split on both sides of the aisle. Although it appears that the Democrats are not going to give the VSE an exception to the flat funding in the 2007 budget, one can easily argue that it was a do-nothing Republican Congress that failed to get the 2007 budget passed in 2006 in the first place. Moreover, the Bush White House has failed to propose NASA budgets in prior years that matched the original budget plan in the VSE.
No need to get partisan — there’s plenty of blame to go around and most of it lies with NASA’s leadership. Anyone with half a brain could have predicted that the budgetary good times would come to an end at some point in any 15 or 20 year effort that crosses multiple White Houses and many Congresses. NASA’s leadership should have planned for such an eventuality from the start (as the VSE did) rather than grasping too far for a marginally better LEO truck that ended up sucking all the budgetary oxygen out of exploration (and science and aeronautics, too).
“NASA’s leadership should have planned for such an eventuality from the start (as the VSE did) rather than grasping too far for a marginally better LEO truck that ended up sucking all the budgetary oxygen out of exploration (and science and aeronautics, too).”
Bingo
While politics will always be with us why is Mike Griffin wasting what precious resources we have on developing the Scotty rocket, duplicating what we already have in ELVs, while leaving no money to transition the only operational system we have to get to the moon?
The current plan doesn’t make any sense from an engineering, economic, or political perspective.
“Do we want to get to the moon or not?â€
John C. Houbolt – November 15, 1961
Question posed in Letter to Dr. Robert C. Seamans Jr, NASA Associate Administrator
‘Assuming the exploration elements of the ESAS plan do get the axe when the next White House comes into office (and I think that’s the most likely scenario regardless of whether the next President is Democrat or Republican),’
I doubt it very much that we are going to develope a spacecraft for operating outside of earth orbit and not operate outside of earth orbit. Once we get the cev, we will definately goto the moon and beyond.
vze3gz45
Anonymous: most of the blame will lies at Griffin’s feet for his politically unsustainable ESAS plan and choosing the development of intensive LEO trucks over getting actual exploration hardware underway.
While there is much truth to this, it let’s the White House too much off the hook. If Mr. Bush and Mr. Rumsfeld had not wasted vast resources playing war leaders with optional and ill advised wars (Iraq) on top of required wars (Afghanistan), Dr. Griffin’s plan may have been affordable. That said, by the time Dr. Griffin proposed his plan to try and combined the technical requirements for both Lunar and Mars exploration into one development project, today’s budgetary events should have been predictable and obvious.
— Donald
“I doubt it very much that we are going to develope a spacecraft for operating outside of earth orbit and not operate outside of earth orbit. Once we get the cev, we will definately go to the moon and beyond.”
The problem is that CEV (Orion) still fulfills a purpose by replacing the Shuttle for ISS transport. It’s not like Orion is going to be sitting in the garage doing nothing if the lunar return effort gets terminated. Orion can be kept plenty busy just as a LEO truck, which makes it very easy for future Congresses and White Houses to ignore its lunar (or Mars) applications. And given the high costs of developing all the other hardware needed to actually mount lunar (or Mars) missions (heavy lift vehicles, landers, etc.) — and given that those costs dwarf CEV costs — there is an incentive for future Congresses and White Houses to not authorize those exploration missions and keep Orion in LEO — especially in tha face of other, much larger, and higher priority budget pressures outside NASA.
Orion (CEV) is not the nose under the camel’s tent for exploration — Ares V, LSAM, or other heavy lift/surface lander/exploration infrastructure is. That’s why it was important to get those elements underway during the Bush White House. Unfortunately, Griffin’s political and budgetary naivete resulted in an ESAS study and plan that focused all the Bush White House years and dollars (and then some) on building yet another, duplicative, LEO truck in Ares 1/Orion — while pushing the development of actual exploration hardware out to 2010+.
“If Mr. Bush and Mr. Rumsfeld had not wasted vast resources playing war leaders with optional and ill advised wars (Iraq) on top of required wars (Afghanistan), Dr. Griffin’s plan may have been affordable.”
The problem with this kind of thinking is that we’re thinking too much like the space cadets we are. “Regular” voters (not space cadets like you and me) don’t think in these terms. I don’t think Bush, Rumsfeld, or anyone else in authority thinks about space exploration in the same breath as a major war. They certainly don’t go through a calculus that says if only we could curtail this war then we’d have more money for NASA. Space exploration just isn’t a big enough priority for that to happen, and I just think it’s unrealistic to expect Republican or Democrat decision-makers to think in those terms.
I’m not trying to let the Bush White House off the hook. I just think it’s a tortured argument to try to pin the potential failure of the VSE on the war in Iraq or any other high budget priority. The reality is that almost everything else (whether your politics agrees with it or not) is a higher budget priority, and NASA needs to implement sustainable plans that reflect that reality. And my 2 cent analysis says that the ESAS plan is proving to be unsustainable and that we’ll probably lose the human exploration elements in 2009-10. And since Griffin structured the ESAS study and accepted its recommendations, I place the blame with him, not the Bush White House, which, to be truthful, handed him a rare window of opportunity in the form of the VSE.
“… politics will always be with us [so] why is Mike Griffin wasting what precious resources we have on developing the Scotty rocket, duplicating what we already have in ELVs, while leaving no money to transition the only operational system we have to get to the moon?”
Well put, and much more succinctly than me.
Anonymous: Orion (CEV) is not the nose under the camel’s tent for exploration
In this case, I do disagree with you. It is important to regain the capacity for returning to the moon, and with Orion you gain at least a major part of that. You can assemble the fuel and upper stages in any number of ways, but you need a spacecraft, and Orion gets us that — if it get’s developed. We seem to agree that it is likely to. Two to three years from now when the real decisions are being made, probably a year or so into a new Administration (once higher priorities have been dealt with), they would have few easy choices but to continue a “quiet” (meaning not over budget or dramatically delayed or in the news for some other reason) Orion.
Then, when that or another Administration has some need to go to the moon (China, India, cooperation or competition with one or more of the existing space powers in the ex-Soviet empire and Europe, a new and more realistic scientific ideology than the current one, resources, or something we can’t guess at today), the capacity will be in place.
I don’t think Bush, Rumsfeld, or anyone else in authority thinks about space exploration in the same breath as a major war. . . I just think it’s a tortured argument to try to pin the potential failure of the VSE on the war in Iraq or any other high budget priority.
Unfortunately, I don’t agree with your conclusion here, either. Just because “someone in authority” doesn’t think of something doesn’t mean it isn’t important (think of Iraq). The United States has finite resources. Since we have tied large percentages of them up doing other things (whether you define that as optional wars or social entitlements), that leaves less for discretionary spending like spaceflight. Wasting huge amounts in senseless wars while not cutting anything else makes investment in spaceflight of any kind less likely — whether you think about it or not.
— Donald
“In this case, I do disagree with you. It is important to regain the capacity for returning to the moon, and with Orion you gain at least a major part of that. You can assemble the fuel and upper stages in any number of ways, but you need a spacecraft, and Orion gets us that — if it get’s developed. We seem to agree that it is likely to.”
From a technical perspective, I agree with you that Orion (or some other crew capsule and insertion stage) is one of three critical components necessary to reestablish a human lunar capability. (The other two being a lander and some kind of heavy lift or in-space fueling.) I also agree that a future NASA, White House, or Congress could apply Orion to a different launch vehicle (but they’ll have to be willing to spend additional bucks on landers and heavy lift or in-space fueling to actually get back to the Moon). And I also agree that Ares I and Orion will most likely get completed, partly because they’re needed for ISS and to retire Shuttle but also because they’ll be so far along by the next election.
But from a political/budget perspective, I disagree that a half-completed (or completed) Orion is enough to commit the next White House or future Congresses to a human lunar return, primarily because it’s satisfactory from that perspective to limit Orion to ISS transport alone. For the next White House to be accused of “wasting” dollars by cancelling NASA’s lunar return plans, exploration-specific elements (like Ares V and/or the LSAM) must be well underway. If they’re not, then the next White House can easily cancel the lunar return elements of the ESAS plan, claim that the investment in Orion was well-made for ISS transport/Shuttle retirement alone, and apply the lunar dollars elsewhere.
I think we have to recognize the differences between technical considerations and political/budgetary considerations. The former is necessary, but not sufficient, for sustaining programs over long periods of time. For that, we must also satisfy the latter considerations as well.
“Then, when that or another Administration has some need to go to the moon (China, India, cooperation or competition with one or more of the existing space powers in the ex-Soviet empire and Europe,”
I wouldn’t bet on competition with China, India, or Russia to rescue or reinvigorate a human lunar return for the foreseeable future (at least the next couple decades). China has no official human lunar plans beyond a single robotic orbiter (even the date for their single-element space station is up in the air), India is even further behind, and Russia doesn’t have the dollars to pull it off. Even the recent Chinese ASAT test argues for NASA to forgo exploration in favor of other technology priorities.
And as far as cooperation, it would be much cheaper for a future White House to involve China or India in the ISS (which the Chinese have expressed interest in), than build the additional vehicles necessary to go back to the Moon.
“Wasting huge amounts in senseless wars while not cutting anything else makes investment in spaceflight of any kind less likely — whether you think about it or not.”
In the abstract, I don’t disagree with you. But in terms of real-world policymaking and political deal-making, it’s not the way our system works. If we want to see actual exploration get underway, NASA has to adapt its programmatic and budget strategies to that reality. Abstract arguments about how priorities should get consciously and carefully weighed in a perfect world (at least for space cadets) don’t move the ball farther down the field.
Unfortunately… my 2 cents, FWIW.
> So much for the sloppy accusations from some that the Bush administration was going to casually
> abandon the Vision for Space Exploration. It’s pretty clear that if manned space exploration is going
> to get killed there will only be one set of fingerprints on the knife, Democratic Party fingerprints.
Brad, you’re confusing “space exploration” with space exploration *funding*.
At the height of the Shuttle era (1985), NASA flew 59 astronauts on 9 flights. Even in the post-Columbia era, they will probably manage to fly at least 28 astronauts per year.
By contrast, Apollo on Steroids might manage 2-3 flights a year with 8-12 astronauts. The Vision for Space Exploration actually represents a dramatic cutback in manned space exploration at NASA, and you can’t blame the Democrat Party for that.
ANONYMOUS said: Even the recent Chinese ASAT test argues for NASA to forgo exploration in favor of other technology priorities.
Anon,
This is a quite interesting technical wrinkle that nobody is talking or writing about.
If you want to use the Chinese ASAT test as a justification, then NASA should throw away the superheavy LV approach, and invest in the primary alternative:
1) Commercial RLVs that launch smaller payloads (including prop) very cheaply and rapidly, but in larger numbers of flights, and
2) On-orbit propellant transfer and storage capabilities.
The first capability — RLVs — provides ORS, which is a key capability needed to mitigate ASAT capabilities. The second capability (on-orbit prop transfer), when combined with the first (RLVs), would provide a transformational capability for our national assets.
Our national assets would be provided with on-orbit refueling, making it quite feasible (and relatively low cost) for them to take aggressive high-thrust evasive maneuvers in orbit to avoid ASAT attacks. As they use up their prop doing so, they get refueled by the RLVs.
You do get benefits by having one of these capabilities without the other — but you get the maximum benefit by having both.
This also happens to be the architecture that generates much more progress by the commercial space industry.
– Al
‘and given that those costs dwarf CEV costs — there is an incentive for future Congresses and White Houses to not authorize those exploration missions and keep Orion in LEO —’
No, I think this government and future US governments see (will see)lower earth orbit operations as a waste of NASA dollars and boring, and if money is going to be spent on human operations in space, it has to be beyond earth orbit. There is now and will be in the future bipartisan support for beyond earth orbit operations. We will get beyond earth orbit some way reguardless of cost. The interest of future generations of young people will never be captured by continuing low earth orbit operations for the next 30 years and the government knows that. The government knows low earth orbit operations are a waiste in the future.
“There is now and will be in the future bipartisan support for beyond earth orbit operations.”
I don’t know if that’s true. It was a Republican-controlled Congress that passed the NASA authorization endorsing the VSE, and they did so before Griffin’s ESAS study and plan.
Beyond the House’s half-billion dollar reduction to the budget request for exploration in the 2007 continuing resolution, the fact that only 40 congressmen signed a letter in support of NASA against the cut, and the fact that the Congress is no longer controlled by the President’s party, we don’t have much else to go on as to whether the new Democrat-controlled Congress will continue to give exploration the same level of support as the prior Congress.
But all of those indicators are pretty negative, IMO.
FWIW…
“If you want to use the Chinese ASAT test as a justification, then NASA should throw away the superheavy LV approach, and invest in the primary alternative:
1) Commercial RLVs that launch smaller payloads (including prop) very cheaply and rapidly, but in larger numbers of flights, and
2) On-orbit propellant transfer and storage capabilities.
The first capability — RLVs — provides ORS, which is a key capability needed to mitigate ASAT capabilities. The second capability (on-orbit prop transfer), when combined with the first (RLVs), would provide a transformational capability for our national assets.
Our national assets would be provided with on-orbit refueling, making it quite feasible (and relatively low cost) for them to take aggressive high-thrust evasive maneuvers in orbit to avoid ASAT attacks. As they use up their prop doing so, they get refueled by the RLVs.”
From a commercial perspective, such a shift in priorities would be fantastic. But it probably could not be fielded in an operational way for a decade or two, depending on funding priority and our ability to rethink our satellite infrastructure.
But assuming we assess the threat as credible, I would suspect that we’d respond to the Chinese test with more short-term measures — through diplomatic means (no civil space cooperation with China, treaty to ban destructive ASAT testing in orbit in the name of reducing orbital debris, etc.); non-destructive and reversible countermeasures (e.g., jamming, lasers); and better tracking and targeting of China’s mobile ICBM/IRBM assets.
That option would be a lot cheaper and more effective in the short-term than developing an operational responsive spacelift capability (even after picking up on DARPA’s FALCON program) and adjusting our satellite tail to it — as much as I would love to see the latter option happen.
FWIW…
Anonymous,
I agree that we can and should take many of short-term actions that are easier and lower cost. I even think that we probably will.
I also agree that the capabilities I mention will take 1-2 decades.
However, I don’t think a Chinese ASAT that can take out a couple satellites at 500 miles is the biggest threat to the U.S. For example, such a capability will not threaten our precision strike capability, which depends on a GPS constellation at a much higher alttitude. Any nation that starts a war with the U.S., but does not take out our precision strike capability, is being foolish.
I believe the real national security threat to the U.S. is over the “mid-to-long” term. China is a rapidly emerging power whose GDP, by some projections, will pass that of the U.S. by somewhere in the 2040 time frame … and then keep on going. By the end of the 21st Century, China could easily have twice the GDP of the U.S.
Economic power will translate into military power.
I think that an operational system — based on RLVs + orbital propellant transfer capabilities — that came on line in a “decade or two” would be showing up right when we really needed it.
If we could think “long term”, and if the WH and Congress really wanted its investment in NASA exploration to pay dividends for national security (and in economic returns in the form of a thriving commercial space industry) this is the way we would proceed.
– Al
“I think that an operational system — based on RLVs + orbital propellant transfer capabilities — that came on line in a “decade or two†would be showing up right when we really needed it.”
Although I doubt the Goldman Sachs GDP scenarios for China — they just have too many population, standard of living, and environmental problems to keep growing at their current rate for decades to come — your scenario is still a fair one for where we might be with China in the next few decades. I just don’t know if folks in power are that farsighted technologically.
I’ve been doing a little research into what could have driven the Chinese to conduct such a test. There’s a solid blog with some very good entries on the subject — armcontrolwonk.com — by Dr. Jeffrey Lewis from the Kennedy School at Harvard (who apparently was the first to break the news). He also wrote a book based on his doctoral thesis — Minimum Means of Reprisal — which does a great job explaining Chinese strategic doctrine and mindset.
According to Lewis, China is not interested in space weapons for the sake of space. Instead, they’re interested in preserving the effectiveness of their small nuclear arsenal. They’re worried about future U.S. preemptive strike capabilities that could take out their nuclear arsenal in a single attack and leave them with no means of strategic retaliation. These new capabilites are emerging thanks to our heavy spending on missile defense, our vast lead in space, and changes in our overall foreign policy doctrine since 9/11. China was in a similar situation with the Soviets during the 50’s — a situation they refer to as nuclear blackmail — and want to ensure that their small nuclear arsenal remains credible enough in the face of new technologies to prevent such threats from being made against their homeland in the future.
Viewed in this context and in the context of China’s increasing interest over the past decade in establishing a international regime to ban space-based weapons, the ASAT test was likely conducted to cajole the U.S. into talks on these larger strategic balance and collective security issues. If I understand Lewis’s writing correctly, China is basically saying, fine, if the U.S. wants to pursue expensive technologies and first-strike capabilities that will upset the minimal nuclear arsenal we’ve put in place to ensure our strategic security, then we (China) will pursue asymmetric capabilities to show how easy it is to defeat those those technologies and first-strike capabilities at low-cost and encourage the United States to forgo such capabilities in favor of international treaties or other collective security measures that limit or ban their use.
Whether anyone besides Lewis is smart enough to figure this out — especially anyone in power — and step back from this new arms race and give China the small security measures that nation is asking for (however clumsily) remains to be seen.
Fascinating stuff… like trying to read a chess game several moves ahead.
Anon,
I agree that China is doing this for completely strategic reasons, and that we in the West don’t really understand what their objectives are. Several other posters have commented on this — one was Dwayne Day, another was also anonymous, and a 3rd was Rand Simberg.
I too am interested in this subject; and I can only hope that the leaders of our country are doing real research and thinking on this. I have perused armscontrolwonk.com a little, but have not freed up the time (yet) to read through the postings.
Too bad I don’t know who you are, because I would buy you a beer some time to talk about this and other subjects.
********
ANON SAID:
Although I doubt the Goldman Sachs GDP scenarios for China — they just have too many population, standard of living, and environmental problems to keep growing at their current rate for decades to come — your scenario is still a fair one for where we might be with China in the next few decades. I just don’t know if folks in power are that farsighted technologically.
********
Last March there was a discussion here on almost this exact subject between Dwayne Day and I. In summary
If you look at the advanced industrial nations, on a per capita productivity basis, they generally all fall within a given range on a per capita basis. (There is a lot of debates on economic comparisons among economists, but most of it is trying to wring out errors of 10% or less).
If you believe that China WILL eventually become an advanced industrial nation, this means is that unless China pulls a Brazil that China’s GDP will probably (eventually) become 3-4 times that of the U.S. I see no reason — short of a global catastrophe of some kind — that China will not repeat the success of the countries they are economically modeling … e.g., Japan, South Korea, and Singapore.
Yes, It will take some time to get there. But, I don’t get too hung up on whether they pass us in GDP in 2040. IMO, it is a matter of when, not if.
I recommend that those who are interested read the thread.
http://www.spacepolitics.com/2006/03/31/waving-the-red-flag-once-again/
As you say, “FWIW …”
– Al
Anonymous: I don’t know if that’s true. It was a Republican-controlled Congress that passed the NASA authorization endorsing the VSE, and they did so before Griffin’s ESAS study and plan.
For what it is worth, my reading of recent votes is that the Democrats are pro-human spaceflight (or at least not anti-human spaceflight), but more passively so. Unfortunately, a dramatic initiative like the VSE is unlikely from them, but an outright cancellation of human spaceflight is far more unlikely today than it has ever been. I think the Democrats (in Congress or in any future Presidency) will shift money toward their environmental and “traditional space science” priorities, but they are extremely unlikely to cancel the VSE outright. Thus, we’ll end up with something like the Space Station. The whole thing will get under-funded, the next Administration will re-plan the whole thing at great expense and delay, and we will eventually end up with a lunar base — decade(s) late and bazillions over budget.
If hardly the first choice, that’s an okay outcome of the political sausage machine, because then you have a Lunar space station that provides the political justification for something like a lunar COTS. Nobody ever said that this would be quick or easy, but I am still hopeful that it will ultimately happen. . . .
— Donald
Donald,
If we took a poll and stated that:
“we’ll end up with something like the Space Station. The whole thing (VSE) will get under-funded, the next Administration will re-plan the whole thing at great expense and delay, and we will eventually end up with a lunar base — decade(s) late and bazillions over budget.”
… I am betting that few people would say “that’s an okay outcome”.
I agree with you that your scenario is increasingly likely to happen. I just think this outcome it is completely unacceptable. Furthermore, considering the reasoning & creative (and sometimes brilliant) creatures that we are, given advance notice we should do something different.
I don’t understand why anybody would willingly go along with this future, knowing that this was the outcome — excepting those who are the recepients of the taxpayer largesse. I am a huge supporter of COTS, but I never would have suggested that the taxpayer’s of this nation spend $100 Billion on a space station to create a justification for COTS or commercial ISS cargo delivery. The same is true for a lunar base.
If you made this argument to any serious policy person, or politician, that we should spend hundreds-of-billions on creating a lunar base in order to create a justification for a lunar COTS program a couple decades in the future, I think you would be laughed out of the room.
You are a serious and thoughtful person, so I don’t understand why you continue to stick to this viewpoint. If you were given responsibility for the taxpayer’s money, I have to believe that being the responsible person you appear to be, that you could not look at yourself in the mirror every day and still carry out such a policy.
– Al
Al, I continue to stick to this viewpoint because I believe (rightly or wrongly) that at this point in time, it is the only viable option. No, we would not have planned to spend $100 billion on the Space Station to create a market to get COTS, but the alternative (no COTS) was worse. I would respectively suggest that few people who engage in successful politics — certainly once blindly campaigning against the “govment†became a requirement — should be able to look themselves in the mirror.
Is the goal of moving humanity into the Solar System important enough to do what you have to do to get there? Or, is it just important enough to do the “right thing,” however you define that? While there are clear limits (e.g., I would not send anyone to the gas chamber to get to the moon), if I can support this disaster of an Administration after all the hundreds of billions they’ve wasted in Iraq, surely you can support the waste of the odd hundred billion to achieve a far more worthy goal.
Ares-1 is a complete waste of money, Orion is not. Unfortunately, at this point in time, Ares-1 and Orion are politically tied together, therefore I support the waste to get the product we need. In the future, I think the equation is likely to change — but only if we don’t kill the whole thing in fratricidal warfare right now.
Do that, and we’ll be back to developing the technology to “do it right” in open-ended play pens that will never create the markets that can actually get us to the moon.
Unfortunately, the Administrations wider budgetary disasters seem increasingly likely to make that the outcome no matter what we do or support. . . .
— Donald