Deart OTB,

I totally agree.

My point is that it is in the NASA bureaucracy’s material self-interest to understand the custoemr and to give a fig about their requirements. If they did that, they would be enjoying the benefits of a lot more money.

– Al

No, but there’s no denying that the White House’s annual budget requests for NASA have fallen billions short of the promises made in the VSE budget projection.

“Now if Mikulski et al is interested in boosting that amount, I suspect it would be fine with the Administration so long as the money is found elsewhere.”

That’s not how the federal budget process works. Appropriations subcommittees are assigned budget allocations to work within. If they want to add money to a department/agency/program, then it’s almost always coming out of another department/agency/program’s hide. And that almost always means that the White House will oppose the cut because the White House has already decided that the higher amount is the right amount to fund that department/agency/program. There is no free ride.

“You should check what their current un-costed carryover is at ESMD, Mark (you do know that that term means, yes?) – money that was scammed from canceling many other things NASA is supposed to be doing. Now they don’t even know how to spend it”

Mr. Cowing is right that there is a huge bow-wave of uncosted carryover (i.e., dollars appropriated in one year but still unspent by NASA the next year or two) in ESMD, much of which was taken from ISS research, Project Prometheus, exploration research, science, and aeronautics.

But in fairness to ESMD, Ares I/Orion is going to need that carryover to stay on track for a 2015 IOC because the budget profile will not support that schedule without the carryover. The budget for most development projects resembles a Bell curve (rising and then falling through the years), but the top of the Ares I/Orion Bell curve is rather flat without that carryover.

Of course, NASA should not have pursued a budgetarily overextended ESAS plan that required risky funding strategies like carryover, but that’s another argument.

“VSE has been enshrined not only by the President but by legislation. Congress has essentially ordered NASA to do VSE.”

Simply not true. Congress passed an authorization bill supportive of the VSE. But authorization bills only set limits (ceilings) on funding. They do not set floors. They are only guidance and have no teeth that would prevent NASA’s appropriation bills, the mechanism from which agencies like NASA actually get their budgets passed, from funding NASA at a lower level. And of course, that’s exactly what’s been happening nearly every year since the VSE was rolled out (NASA’s first year after the VSE rollout being the exception, largely due to the intervention of O’Keefe and Delay).

It’s also important to remember that it was the prior, Republican-controlled Congress that passed NASA’s last authorization bill. The Democratic takeover effectively made that measure an outdated bill. Aside from the $500 million flattening of the NASA exploration budget in the 2007 budget resolution, we have no real indication of whether the new Democrat-controlled Congress as a whole supports the VSE or not.

“Everything else would seem to me to be of lower priority.”

Even setting aside macro funding issues like the war on terrorism, within NASA’s subcommittees, that’s not going to be the case. For example, initiatives, some started by the White House, in basic research (American Competitiveness Initiative) and energy research are going to rank higher in scramble for funding amoung competing R&D agencies, including NASA.

“When the Griffin’s team conducted the ESAS assessment of the so-called options, “national security”, “commerce” and “science” were never “measures of merit”. If you disagree, please point me to the part of the ESAS study where NASA attempted to objectively measure these WH mandated outputs.

Because Griffin’s NASA did not assess and measure the actual deliverables demanded by their customers, we have the result we have.”

This is an interesting argument. I don’t think it explains everything because politicians always overpromise. But maybe the White House and Congress would have been favorable to higher funding if the ESAS plan had made quicker progress to actual lunar science and commerce (per DIRECT or even just a vibrant lunar robotic program) and/or had allowed effective use of national security assets (EELV). Those are stronger and more sustainable policy arguments than full employment at NASA field centers.

Although there is plenty of blame for VSE underfunding on both sides of the aisle and in both the Congress and White House, for me, it always comes back to how expensive and budgetarily overextended ESAS/Ares I/Orion were from the get-go. Anyone with a modicum of program or budget planning sense and political acuity could have projected that the budget would fall short at some point in a federal program that spanned multiple White Houses and Congresses. Knowing that, they could have pursued a plan that at least fit the budget (or, better yet, provided margin to spare). Griffin did the exact opposite with ESAS, and for that reason, I place most of the blame for the five-year gap, the slipping of any actual human lunar hardware development over the horizon, the massive science and aeronautics cuts, etc. at his feet and not with the Congress or the White House.

“Beg pardon? Speaking as former insider at NASA, the Agency most emphatically DOES NOT understand systems engineering. NASA’s first priority is the preservation of its bureaucracy. If that means parroting buzz words to make it seem that it understands system engineering (or Total Quality Management, or concurrent engineering, or Zero Defects, or the latest flavor-of-the-month), then it will do so.

As for ‘customer requirements’ – NASA has never understood who the customer is or given a fig as to what the requirements might be.”

That statement is a trifecta. Funny, sad, and true.

Beg pardon? Speaking as former insider at NASA, the Agency most emphatically DOES NOT understand systems engineering. NASA’s first priority is the preservation of its bureaucracy. If that means parroting buzz words to make it seem that it understands system engineering (or Total Quality Management, or concurrent engineering, or Zero Defects, or the latest flavor-of-the-month), then it will do so.

As for ‘customer requirements’ – NASA has never understood who the customer is or given a fig as to what the requirements might be.

In my opinnion, Congress & the WH would have supported funding “above the levels originally requested” if NASA’s specific plan to implement the VSE had delivered significant and measureable benefits in “national security, commerce, and science” as mandated by the White House.

Look at the big checkes that the WH & Congress are writing for the DoD (national security).

Look at the big checks that the WH & Congress are writing for the American Competitiveness Intiative (commerce, national security, and science).

When the Griffin’s team conducted the ESAS assessment of the so-called options, “national security”, “commerce” and “science” were never “measures of merit”. If you disagree, please point me to the part of the ESAS study where NASA attempted to objectively measure these WH mandated outputs.

Because Griffin’s NASA did not assess and measure the actual deliverables demanded by their customers, we have the result we have. Which explains the phenomena that Mr. Cowing describes.

From one perspective, this was a “systems engineering” failure from an agency which purportedly understands “systems engineering”. Good systems engineers start with the output criteria which includes “What is the customer’s requirement?” and then focus like a laser on delivering what the customer wants. But if you don’t set up the problem right (e.g., if you don’t start with the correct requirements) then you get into big trouble.

– Al

If WH really supported VSE they’d be funding it at – or above the levels originally requested. They are trying to cut it instead by virtue of not fully funding it.

Sure it can. This is chump change compared to its other priorities. With VSE, the Administration promulgated a broad directive to NASA, whose implementation could be interpreted many different ways. It is quite apparent that the whole purpose of VSE (at least in the eyes of the Bush Administration) was to provide an inspirational response to the Columbia failure. Only a handful of congressmen and NASA aficionados are taking it seriously, and only to the extent that it serves their self interests.

I think it is time for a software-based user ban.

Freedom of speech does not equal a right to be rude and disrespectful on private property. If somebody comes into my home, and starts cursing at my guests, I would throw them out.

If I don’t kick you out, then it is no longer MY home.

This is totally in Jeff’s power and within his rights.

– Al