Congress, NASA

A step forward on the NASA budget

Space News (subscription required) reported online late yesterday that the commerce, justice and science subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee approved a $17.6-billion FY08 budget for NASA during a markup hearing on Monday. That top-line figure is about $300 million more than the president’s request (although less than what many people have been hoping and asking for), but the additional funding is allocated not to exploration or space operations (shuttle and station) but instead to science, aeronautics, and educational programs; according to the article, space operations took a minor cut to help pay for the increases in other programs. There aren’t many details about what programs exactly are getting additional (or reduced) funding since the bill itself hasn’t been released, but, according to a committee press release (one that is not yet available on the committee’s web site), the bill includes “a moratorium prohibiting NASA from implementing a reduction in force and from funding any research, development or demonstration activity related exclusively to Human Exploration of Mars.”

Update: SPACE.com has a free version of the article if you don’t have a Space News subscription. Also, the committee’s web site now has the press release about the funding bill, and the schedule of hearings has been updated to include the full committee markup of the bill on June 18th.

19 comments to A step forward on the NASA budget

  • Ferris Valyn

    So, am I reading this right in that we will continue to have the standing army, to waste money, but not do anything of substance?

    Great.

  • anonymous

    I suspect the $300 million above the Presdent’s request is all earmarked. I’d be surprised if much of it restores cancelled science missions or schedules and/or competed science or aeronautics technology and research.

    It sounds like exploration may have escaped unscathed, but the hit to space operations does not bode well. There may also be a put that took from exploration when the sheets get pulled back, or exploration may have to pony up to fix the space operations cut.

    Overall, obtaining the President’s large request in this environment is an achievement and NASA leg. affairs should be complemented. That said, there’s a long road to hoe ahead. For example, it would not be surprising to see a cut to NASA or human space flight when the bill hits the committee level and Chairman Obey.

    The new House appropriations obsession with “cutting” non-existant humans-to-Mars programs appears weird, but I’d guess it’s a fig leaf to make the subcommittee look tough and hopefully prevent Obey from making cuts at the committee level. I recall that he criticized the “humans-to-Mars program” last year.

    The RIF moratorium language, however, is truly damaging. The Shuttle program should be shedding personnel by now. The longer NASA has to wait to do so, the more painful the future separations will be and/or the less likely that Ares I/Orion can be operated at significant savings to Shuttle.

    FWIW…

  • Mark Chandler

    Maybe it’s just a recognition of the fact that much of the gutting of science and science education at NASA has been politically motivated by the administration’s dislike of the generally environmentally friendly nature of much of NASA’s earth science initiatives.

  • Anonymous wrote:

    “The RIF moratorium language, however, is truly damaging. The Shuttle program should be shedding personnel by now. The longer NASA has to wait to do so, the more painful the future separations will be and/or the less likely that Ares I/Orion can be operated at significant savings to Shuttle.”

    That’s exactly right.

    The only way to reduce the $/kg to orbit is to increase the kg because the dollars will be fixed by politics. This is yet another reason why going with Direct/Jupiter makes so much sense. We massively increase the kg per launch over Ares 1, protect our HLV foundation and have a vehicle with plenty of margin for the ISS crew plus ISS payload. Add an EDS to the Jupiter-120 making it a Jupiter-232 and a 2xHLV approach delivers more payload to LEO than the current Ares 1/5 1.5 plan could ever hope to, even with the “steroids”.

    Given FY08 the budget is VSE still on the same allowance it had from FY07 in this budget or do they get an increase? What is their budget for FY08 vs FY07?

  • Stephen: The only way to reduce the $/kg to orbit is to increase the kg because the dollars will be fixed by politics.

    Interesting observation. Retaining the Shuttle work force has been a key element of the VSE from the very beginning — and is a key part of why it had (and, as the budget line shows, just may yet have) a political chance. However, there is another way to reduce costs. If SpaceX, Kistler, et al, manage to produce workable vehicles, and if NASA retains a market for them (the Space Station or some other LEO project), lower costs can co-exist with the high-cost NASA infrastructure — much as the lower cost Delta-II and EELVs have co-existed with the Shuttle. (And even the truly amazing accomplishment the Air Force managed of creating an expendable that cost almost as much as the Shuttle in the Titan-IV.) Sure it’s wasteful, but that may well be the political reality. If and when non-communications commercial activities come about (e.g., larger scale orbital tourism, oxygen trade), the lower cost vehicles will be there to support them. . . .

    — Donald

  • richardb

    Business as usual is what it appears to me. Democrats don’t have a better idea on using Nasa than Bush so no surprises, no new agendas. I read today that in defense of earmarks, Obey was it (?) Said, hey, earmarks only add up to 2% of the budget. In Nasa’s case that would be about $340 million….. Anonymous is right.

  • Stephen,

    “Given FY08 the budget is VSE still on the same allowance it had from FY07 in this budget or do they get an increase? What is their budget for FY08 vs FY07?”

    The bill states that the Exploration budget is untouched from the PResident’s request.

  • anonymous

    “The bill states that the Exploration budget is untouched from the PResident’s request.”

    True. I would just caution that the details of the space operations cut have yet to be revealed. If that cut is unacceptable for NASA, Griffin would have little choice but to seek offsets in exploration, as science and aeronautics are apparently fenced by the bill.

    Of course, these kinds of scenarios will remain hypothetical until the House bill gets farther along, and we see what the Senate appropriators do.

    FWIW…

  • Anonymous

    Re: Exploration — the president’s ’08 request includes a substantial increase for ESMD over both the requested ’07 level and the actual (lower) enacted level. So what this means is that House appropriators are willing to let NASA continue to shift a larger share of its budget to Orion, Ares and the Moon-oriented programs. That said, this mark — which can stil be undone at the full committee level next week — is pretty decent.

  • Anonymous wrote:

    “Re: Exploration — the president’s ‘08 request includes a substantial increase for ESMD over both the requested ‘07 level and the actual (lower) enacted level. So what this means is that House appropriators are willing to let NASA continue to shift a larger share of its budget to Orion, Ares and the Moon-oriented programs. That said, this mark — which can stil be undone at the full committee level next week — is pretty decent.”

    Understood, but aren’t the NASA committees generally pro-NASA? It seems it’s the current House and Senate Leadership isn’t all that excited about going back to the Moon.

  • It’s true that prohibiting any funding of a humans-to-Mars program does not have much practical impact at the moment, since such a project is only being discussed as something that might be done after the return to the Moon. Still, it reflects a disturbing attitude among many legislators, the most important being Representative Obey.

    I have heard that Rep. Lampson was circulating a letter to be signed by fellow Democrats, asking Obey to ease up on his opposition to manned spaceflight. Anyone else heard of this?

  • al Fansome

    I think NASA’s legislative affairs team has exceeded expectations, and they are probably celebrating this one battle.

    ESMD is not out of the woods yet.

    I am wondering what Obey will do at the full committee level, as well as what floor amendments might come up. This is an odd political year, and something could easily come out of left field.

    It will also be interesting to see what comes out of Senate Approps under Mikulski.

    – Al

  • D. messier

    Mark Chandler wrote:

    Maybe it’s just a recognition of the fact that much of the gutting of science and science education at NASA has been politically motivated by the administration’s dislike of the generally environmentally friendly nature of much of NASA’s earth science initiatives.

    Yeah. Seems like an effort to try to restore some of the programs. At at least stop any further damage. Congress is (in theory) a co-equal branch of government and it has priorities of its own. Bush is seldom interested in acknowledging this or accommodating their interests, particularly when Congress is run by the opposition party.

  • 290 million steps forward and 670 million back.

  • […] take up the Commerce, Justice, Science appropriations bill, the one that includes funding for NASA. The subcommittee added about $300 million to the agency’s overall total in its markup hearing …, although it transferred some money from space operations (shuttle and station) to aeronautics, […]

  • anonymous

    Along with Obey and the Senate, it looks like a Presidential veto is in play for the spending bill that funds NASA this year:

    http://townhall.com/columnists/RobertDNovak/2007/06/18/bushs_veto_strategy

    It’s going to be one, hard, long slog…

  • […] News (subscription required), about $150 million more than what the administration requested but about $150 million less than what their House counterparts approved earlier this month. Full details about the budget aren’t available yet, but it appears that most of the increase […]

  • […] is scheduled to meet today to markup the Commerce, Justice, and Science appropriations bill that the CJS subcommittee approved last month. The subcommittee version gave NASA about $300 million more than what the White House requested, […]

  • […] few details about the spending bill have been released yet, the bill approved by the full committee appears largely identical to what the CJS subcommittee approved last month. Rep. Dave Weldon (R-FL) is taking credit for one amendment, though, that requires NASA to […]

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