Congress

Nelson vs. Nelson

Ah, the headline writer’s dream: a battle between not only two senators of the same party, but also with the same last name. As Florida Today and Orlando Sentinel both report, Bill Nelson (D-FL) is trying to convince Ben Nelson (D-NE) to support the $1.5 billion in NASA funding in the Senate version of the economic stimulus package. Bill Nelson is a strong supporter of the agency and has been pushing for the extra funding, while Ben Nelson (not related to Bill) is concerned about the existence of “non-stimulative items” in the bill—including, apparently, that NASA funding Bill Nelson is seeking.

In an effort to preserve the NASA money, Bill Nelson has asked for support from Sen. Daniel Inouye, the chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee. In a letter to Inouye, Bill Nelson cites a wide variety of benefits NASA research provides, adding that the upcoming Shuttle-Constellation gap is “shameful” and appreciating any additional funding Inouye can help provide “to help address this problem.” A vote on the stimulus package, with or without the NASA funding, could come as early as today.

5 comments to Nelson vs. Nelson

  • Major Tom

    If the objective of the stimulus bill is to get money into the economy over the coming months, then the vast majority of the proposed NASA funding doesn’t belong in the bill. With the exception of civil servant salaries and buildings, practically all NASA appropriations are for two-year money, meaning that NASA has two years just to get the funds obligated (i.e., select the contractor or grantee that the funds will go to). It takes even longer to spend most funds at NASA (i.e., get a receipt from the contractor or grantee and disburse the funds to them). As much as I wish it were otherwise, taxpayer funds spent on NASA Earth science satellites and research or NASA aeronautics technology and research won’t make their way into the economy until after the economy has started recovering. They are probably worthy projects in their own right, but Ben Nelson is right — they should be funded separately from the stimulus bill.

    The same holds true for Constellation spending, only more so because:

    1) It’s not enough, not by a long shot, to accelerate Ares I/Orion by an appreciable amount; and

    2) It stands a good chance of being totally wasted if the Obama Administration shifts course on Shuttle/Ares I/Orion.

    Until the Obama White House has their own NASA budget or civil space policy in place (or even NASA Administrator appointed), Bill Nelson is wasting his breath and should stand down. If Nelson really still believes in Ares I/Orion, then his staff are better off lobbying the White House behind the scenes. (Although one would hope Nelson and his staff would bother to honestly confront the myriad and large technical, budget, and schedule challenges facing Ares I/Orion before making such a commitment.)

    It’s only $50 million, but the one NASA spending item that might fit in the bill is repairing hurricane damage to buildings at Stennis and Michoud. Unlike spacecraft procurements or research AOs, theoretically it shouldn’t take NASA long to get a contractor on board to repair damage to existing buildings. Of course, that wouldn’t hold true if NASA decides to redesign said buildings.

    FWIW…

  • Charles in Houston

    I am NOT a big fan of this stimulus idea – if we couldn’t afford it when we did not have so many economic worries how can we afford it now?

    But if they are gonna be borrowing and spending wildly… Doesn’t NASA (and other gov’t agencies) have a backlog of maintenance on buildings and facilities???? Couldn’t they (even with gov’t procurement regs) add people to maintenance contracts pretty quickly and reduce the maintenance backlog???

    At least they could clean the VAB – that building inside and out still looks pretty beat up (unless it has changed in the last couple of months).

  • red

    Major Tom: “It’s only $50 million, but the one NASA spending item that might fit in the bill is repairing hurricane damage to buildings at Stennis and Michoud. Unlike spacecraft procurements or research AOs, theoretically it shouldn’t take NASA long to get a contractor on board to repair damage to existing buildings.”

    I admit that I don’t know the details of how this all works. Being outside the process, it seems to me that there are some types of NASA projects that should be executable within 2 years. I can see how getting to the point of actually building a new satellite or changing major contracts like Constellation would take a long time. However, what about the following? I’m just throwing out some ideas that at least seem to me like they could be done faster, and that might have some utility (in case we’re still interested in that). It would be informative at least if someone can explain why they wouldn’t work within, say, 2 years.

    – The House version of the NASA Earth observation funds didn’t seem like they were for getting to the major satellite construction phase for a new satellite. Instead, they seemed to be for initial design and investigation of a whole collection of Earth observation satellites (15 or so recommended by the NAS). Could such initial design over numerous projects be kicked off quicker?

    – I could see how R&A funds could take a while if going from the start of the process. However, couldn’t NASA simply go back to the previous round of R&A competitions and fund the next X% of these projects – the ones that almost made the cut?

    – DISCVR has been on ice for years, but could it be quickly started again?

    – We often hear of projects being cut because of overruns in other projects. Are there any NASA projects on the cutting block for such reasons that could be saved with stimulus funds? The Mars Surface Lander had an overrun that’s supposed to affect other projects. Could some of the funds simply save them?

    – Are there any in-space missions that are due to be shut down for lack of funding that could now be continued? What about telescopes like Arecibo?

    – As Charles in Houston suggests, are there other types of NASA infrastructure projects besides hurricane damage fixes? We often hear about old NASA buildings, old launch facilities, etc. Are any of these ready for upgrades? What about computer equipment, NASA vehicles, and the like? What about some proactive hardening of infrastructure to enable survival in the next hurricane?

    – Could we get more Centennial Challenge economic activity going quickly? There are proposals for new prizes that are already out there. Maybe these could be kicked off fairly quickly, at least to the point of selecting organizations to run them, and getting some teams and sponsors and competition events started, if not final prize wins. If that would take too long, it seems like existing Centennial Challenges (or similar non-NASA competitions) could be augmented quickly. The early economic activity might not be huge, but the NASA funding spent in that phase to get the economic activity going would be close to zero.

    – I’m curious if anyone knows how long it would take to get a COTS-D competition to the point of serious economic activity. With lessons and work from COTS A-C already available, and with the COTS-D idea having been out there for a long time, could it be done quickly, so metal starts cutting soon?

    – What about using stimulus funds to sort of break the ISS commercial supply legal logjam? Is any work actually not happening now or in the next couple years because of the legal issue? (I would think most current work would be funded through COTS and associated private “skin in the game”, but perhaps some of the work is on hold because of the legal battle). I don’t know what the solution would be – maybe split the ISS resupply 3 ways, and use stimulus funding to make up the difference with non-ISS launches?

    – Small projects sometimes work faster than big ones. Are there any small projects that could be in full gear quickly, like smallsats, preparation for suborbital RLV use for engineering/science missions, or ISS use that builds on existing work?

  • Major Tom

    “- The House version of the NASA Earth observation funds didn’t seem like they were for getting to the major satellite construction phase for a new satellite. Instead, they seemed to be for initial design and investigation of a whole collection of Earth observation satellites (15 or so recommended by the NAS). Could such initial design over numerous projects be kicked off quicker?”

    Not really. Even if NASA already had the procurement ready to send out (unlikely), it would probably take some months for teams to put together proposals and for NASA to select which teams will study which missions. I’d guess that the earliest such a selection could be made is late summer/early fall, and the money wouldn’t start flowing until sometime after that. And again, this assumes that NASA’s Science Mission Directorate doesn’t have to take some months just to draft the procurement and get it through legal and other NASA support offices.

    “- I could see how R&A funds could take a while if going from the start of the process. However, couldn’t NASA simply go back to the previous round of R&A competitions and fund the next X% of these projects – the ones that almost made the cut?”

    That could be done quickly, assuming the rules governing the relevant AOs allow for it.

    “- DISCVR has been on ice for years, but could it be quickly started again?”

    IIRC, Triana/DISCVR was mostly an in-house project at GSFC, which, like most NASA field centers, has too much workforce and not enough work. No matter how quickly it gets started, I don’t think we’d see a lot of new NASA hiring or contractor spending from Triana/DISCVR.

    “- We often hear of projects being cut because of overruns in other projects. Are there any NASA projects on the cutting block for such reasons that could be saved with stimulus funds? The Mars Surface Lander had an overrun that’s supposed to affect other projects. Could some of the funds simply save them?”

    The problem with MSL is that the decision has already been made on technical grounds to delay its launch. It’s going to need more money just to keep its development workforce around longer, but that money will come in later years, not 2009.

    “- Are there any in-space missions that are due to be shut down for lack of funding that could now be continued? What about telescopes like Arecibo?”

    Offhand, I don’t know of any missions due to shutdown this year, but the operational workforce for most NASA missions is pretty small so it probably wouldn’t have a big impact anyway. Even more so for Arecibo.

    “- As Charles in Houston suggests, are there other types of NASA infrastructure projects besides hurricane damage fixes? We often hear about old NASA buildings, old launch facilities, etc. Are any of these ready for upgrades? What about computer equipment, NASA vehicles, and the like? What about some proactive hardening of infrastructure to enable survival in the next hurricane?”

    NASA facilities do have a huge backlog of maintenance and repair that would probably inject considerable dollars into the economy this year. You have to be careful and not spend money on buildings that should really be shutdown due to age, obsolesence, lack of use, or likely changes in program direction. But there should be a list of core facility priorities that doesn’t change.

    “- Could we get more Centennial Challenge economic activity going quickly? There are proposals for new prizes that are already out there. Maybe these could be kicked off fairly quickly, at least to the point of selecting organizations to run them, and getting some teams and sponsors and competition events started, if not final prize wins. If that would take too long, it seems like existing Centennial Challenges (or similar non-NASA competitions) could be augmented quickly. The early economic activity might not be huge, but the NASA funding spent in that phase to get the economic activity going would be close to zero.”

    Prizes wouldn’t get government money into the economy anytime soon, but they could certainly stimulate near-term spending by the competing teams, especially if NASA quickly released existing rules for prizes that the Centennial Challenges Program has already drawn up (of which there are many).

    The problem is that Congress has historically preferred not to put money into prizes at NASA, DARPA, and elsewhere because it’s difficult to predict when the money will be won and who will win it. Appropriators would rather see taxpayer money go towards traditional procurement vehicles for which it’s know when they money will be spent and with a high likelihood that it will go to known, local contractors, universities, etc. (NASA’s leadership itself has not done a good job advocating its prize program to Congress as there are always higher internal priorities.)

    “- I’m curious if anyone knows how long it would take to get a COTS-D competition to the point of serious economic activity. With lessons and work from COTS A-C already available, and with the COTS-D idea having been out there for a long time, could it be done quickly, so metal starts cutting soon?”

    NASA could activate the COTS D option on Space-X’s existing Space Act Agreement today. That one is a no-brainer.

    Additional COTS D contractors would take another competition that would probably run through late summer/early fall, but presumably NASA would have the competition on the street quickly given that the paperwork has been done before.

    “- What about using stimulus funds to sort of break the ISS commercial supply legal logjam? Is any work actually not happening now or in the next couple years because of the legal issue? (I would think most current work would be funded through COTS and associated private “skin in the game”, but perhaps some of the work is on hold because of the legal battle). I don’t know what the solution would be – maybe split the ISS resupply 3 ways, and use stimulus funding to make up the difference with non-ISS launches?”

    More money for ISS resupply contracts is probably going to have to wait until after the GAO decision on the recent protest. Hopefully that comes this spring, at which point more dollars could be added to exercise options on the existing Space-X and/or OSC contracts and/or another competition held.

    “- Small projects sometimes work faster than big ones. Are there any small projects that could be in full gear quickly, like smallsats, preparation for suborbital RLV use for engineering/science missions, or ISS use that builds on existing work?”

    The size is less of an issue than the fact that NASA would probably have to draw up a new procurement, AO, or other competition for most of these objectives, give proposers enough time to respond intelligently, and then downselect. There may be competitions sitting on the shelf somewhere ready to go, but they’re probably relatively few and will still take some months before awards are made.

    Hope this helps… FWIW…

  • red

    Major Tom: “Hope this helps… FWIW…”

    Yes, that gives me a good idea of what could be done quickly, what might come into play in the 2nd year (maybe still of some stimulus use depending on how the economy goes, but not optimal), and what would just take way too long.

    Major Tom (on early phases of new Earth observation sat work): “Even if NASA already had the procurement ready to send out (unlikely), it would probably take some months for teams to put together proposals and for NASA to select which teams will study which missions.”

    It sounds like the project kickoff and team selection process takes a long time. Maybe even if NASA were under a “use it or lose it” rule to encourage them to go faster, it would still be too slow. I wonder if they might be able to kick off satellite or space probe projects that have already flown (just a 2nd version to keep taking similar data, or to take it in a slightly different way or place) fairly quickly. They might be able to have an excuse to quickly go with a pre-selected vendor (the original vendor) and design (the original design) in that case. Maybe a mission like CONTOUR would work, too. This approach might work better with an added mission in long mission lines like some of the NOAA and DOD ones, though.

    Another similar approach might be to kick of a space probe that came in 2nd place before (eg: 2nd place in a past Discovery mission competition) … if the runner-up teams are even still together.

    Major Tom (on funding runner-up R&A groups from previous rounds): “That could be done quickly, assuming the rules governing the relevant AOs allow for it.”

    Maybe a similar approach could also be taken with previous NASA SBIR rounds?

    I don’t have much to add on the rest of the clarifications except to say that it will be interesting to see, if NASA actually gets the money, which types of projects it winds up funding … the ones with more promise as quick economic stimuli, or the ones that are slower but that address non-stimulus political pressures (such as the Florida one alluded to in the original post).

Leave a Reply

  

  

  

You can use these HTML tags

<a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>