Congress, NASA

Stimulus compromise: $1 billion for NASA?

That’s what the Orlando Sentinel is reporting this evening, based on a message from an aide to Sen. Bill Nelson. Of that $1 billion, $400 million would go to exploration, only slightly less than what the Senate approved earlier this week (and a major victory for spaceflight supporters given the House version contained nothing.) The breakouts for science, aeronautics, and facility repairs were not disclosed. How that $400 million for exploration would be spent isn’t clear; the Sentinel reports that “Presumably that money would go to NASA’s Constellation program”, although one suspects SpaceX is hoping that $300 million or more would be available to exercise its COTS-D option.

17 comments to Stimulus compromise: $1 billion for NASA?

  • Commenter

    This is a huge waste of money. I can’t believe that the Transition Team did such a poor job in assessing the current problems and issues with Ares. This is especially surprising in light of Griffin’s infantile outbursts and overly defensive attitude. I am also disappointed with the Democratic conference. I guess the Republicans may be right that this is really just a massive pork barrel project intended to placate various congressional interests.

  • I can’t believe that the Transition Team did such a poor job in assessing the current problems and issues with Ares.

    How do you know what kind of job they did? Have you seen their report?

  • Alan Ladwig

    Having been a member of the NASA Review Team for the transition I would like to share insight on the Stimulus Package process. The Administration’s proposed package had the benefit of a number of inputs. Submissions were provided by the Review Team, NASA, and other stakeholder organizations within the Executive Branch. As the package moved forward additional inputs came from members of Congress, corporations, and influential individuals.

    As with any political activity, the final product is a result of how well it aligns with priorities and the outcome of compromises and trade-offs. One may not be in 100 percent agreement with the final bill, but such processes are not conducted in isolation. The NASA Review Team was just one of many inputs.

  • Commenter

    Alan, my apologies for sounding so disparaging of your team’s hard work. It had seemed like you folks had done a great job of initiating the process of “checking under the hood.” It was frustrating to see a large amount of money then being applied to reinforce the same direction in the Agency.

  • Al Fansome

    Commenter,

    Although you incorrectly disparaged the NASA transition team, there is some truth to your suggestion that this is a massive pork barrel project to assuage congressional interests.

    Sen. Bill Nelson is one of the congressional interests who weighed in, with as Alan says “additional input”.

    Hopefully, any additional money will be provided in a manner that is flexible. If there is flexibility, then we may end up drinking lemonade.

    FWIW,

    – Al

  • richardb

    “there is some truth to your suggestion that this is a massive pork barrel project to assuage congressional interests.”

    Al, thanks for the laugh. Its loaded with hundreds of billions in pet projects spread across all 435 Congressional districts plus territories, not all $800 billion perhaps is pork, so the adverb “some” is appropriate.

    This bill was passed in the historic pork barrel style of creating a huge, complex bill over hundreds of pages which no one Senator or Congressmen has read. They know it by heart though when it comes to their cut of the pork.
    Despite this fact, the Senate found a rationale to divert 1/800 of it to Nasa. Well done Senators.

    Don’t forget, Nasa gets another chance to fight for funding during the regular PorkFest, known as annual appropriations markups during the rest of the calendar year.

  • Major Tom

    “This is a huge waste of money. I can’t believe that the Transition Team did such a poor job in assessing the current problems and issues with Ares. This is especially surprising in light of Griffin’s infantile outbursts and overly defensive attitude.”

    Congress really drove the details of the bill, not the White House. As the President made clear in his press conference and other venues, the White House’s top priorities were the total amount and timeliness of the bill. Assuming the White House even knows what direction it wants to go with Constellation yet (remember that we don’t even have a nominee for NASA Administrator), they wouldn’t sacrifice the size or speed of the bill’s overall economic impact for correcting program content that represents about 1/1,600th of the bill’s total funding.

    Setting aside the statements of any potential nominee for NASA Administrator, the earliest that we’ll have an indication of the White House’s direction on Constellation is probably the President’s FY 2010 budget request to Congress, which won’t be out until May. If at that time, the Obama Administration is proposing to throw more money down the Ares I/Orion drain or not even putting in place a study of alternatives, then we’ll have genuine cause for concern.

    But right now, overall economic impact, not programmatic details, is the White House’s overriding concern in the bill. And even if the White House wanted to debate the programmatic details of this bill, it’s doubtful that the Obama Administration knows what direction it wants to take NASA’s human space flight program yet anyway.

    “I am also disappointed with the Democratic conference. I guess the Republicans may be right that this is really just a massive pork barrel project intended to placate various congressional interests.”

    Although the porkbarreling in favor of local interests is certainly not surprising, I agree that congressional decisions on Constellation funding in the bill are disappointing, especially from the experienced senators and representatives that should know better by now. The program is riddled with technical, budgetary, and schedule problems and risks. At some point, congressional duty to provide program oversight and to protect the taxpayer has to trump local interests. Unless it goes to COTS D or another alternative, $400 million for Constellation will barely accelerate Ares I/Orion by one month. And it’s not going to have any significant impact on the economy in the near-term given how long it takes NASA to get money on contract. There are much better purposes for my children and grandchildren’s taxpayer dollars, inside or outside NASA (or we could have just chosen not to spend that particular $400 million at all).

    FWIW…

  • Major Tom

    Good article that reinforces points made above about Constellation requiring many billions of dollars more to reduce the gap by even one year, about Ares I/Orion’s many woes, and about NASA and the Obama Administration needing to review alternatives in the months ahead before a clear White House direction on human space flight can be set. See (add http://www.):

    nasaspaceflight.com/2009/02/extra-nasa-funds-initial-step-towards-gap-reduction/

    FWIW…

  • yg1968

    Space.com is giving the details of the extra $1B of NASA funding in the compromise bill:

    $400M for space exploration
    $400M for climate change
    $150M for aeronautics
    $50M to repair damages caused by Katrina
    $2M for the Office of the Inspector General

    http://www.space.com/news/090212-senate-nasa-stimulus-update.html

  • Robert Horning

    $400m for climate change?

    What are they going to do, buy gilded chairs for a bunch of climatologists? Cover Antarctica with a thousand weather stations for a decade?

    Both would be vastly better places for spending money than to dump it down the rat hole of a feasibility study to send up yet another earth observing satellite based on a political philosophy. And they would get some real data about climate change (or at least make the climatologists comfortable when reviewing actual data).

    What I especially don’t like here is diffusing the focus of NASA to something it is not. Weather studies are better suited for the National Science Foundation or even the “National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration” (NOAA) that is explicitly involved with climate studies. It boggles my mind here. It isn’t like the “National Weather Service” (a part of NOAA) might know a thing about climate studies or have established procedures on how to collect climatological data.

    This sounds like more bureaucracies in more places to waste more money doing the same thing.

  • John Daniels

    http://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2009/02/extra-nasa-funds-initial-step-towards-gap-reduction/

    With quotes from Senate advisor Jeff Bingham about the money and the future, with mentions for the alternatives like EELV and Direct, and Extension of Shuttle. Was published 12 hours ago

  • Major Tom

    “$400m for climate change?

    What are they going to do, buy gilded chairs for a bunch of climatologists? Cover Antarctica with a thousand weather stations for a decade?”

    Quoting from the actual article, the $400M is for “for Earth science and climate monitoring projects” — not “climate change”, “gilded chairs” for anyone, or “a thousand weather stations”.

    If we want to debate climate change (and there’s nothing wrong with that), this is the wrong forum — this is a space policy forum, not an environmental policy forum. And if we’re going to debate climate change, our arguments should be based on evidence and logic, not hyperbole and misquoted legislation.

    “What I especially don’t like here is diffusing the focus of NASA to something it is not. Weather studies are better suited for the National Science Foundation or even the “National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration” (NOAA)…”

    NASA has been in the Earth observation business since it was created. NASA built and operated the first two weather satellites, Vanguard 2 and TIROS-1, launched in 1959 and 1960, respectively. NASA was conducting “weather studies” before it was performing robotic planetary science or human space flight, and has been doing “weather studies” more than a decade longer than NOAA.

    Please, let’s do a little research and not post such ignorant statements here.

    “It isn’t like the ‘National Weather Service’ (a part of NOAA) might know a thing about climate studies or have established procedures on how to collect climatological data.”

    Come on, one can’t be that misinformed. Do we really have to explain that “weather” and “climate” are not the same thing?

    Oy vey…

  • Al Fansome

    FANSOME: “there is some truth to your suggestion that this is a massive pork barrel project to assuage congressional interests.”

    RICHARDB: Al, thanks for the laugh. Its loaded with hundreds of billions in pet projects spread across all 435 Congressional districts plus territories, not all $800 billion perhaps is pork, so the adverb “some” is appropriate.

    Richard,

    Words have meanings, and being clear on those meanings is important. The word “Pork” has a clear meaning with regards to congressional spending.

    Just to be clear the vast majority of the money in the bill does not fit the definition of “pork”, but it could still be judged to be “wasteful spending”, or at least not “spending with a high rate of return”. In fact, I have not (yet) seen a clear example of pork that is in the final stimulus package. (I am not saying it does not exist.)

    PORK is a special kind of congressional appropriation that is clearly & narrowly targeted at a very specific location, company, or congressional district, or a very specific & narrowly defined project. It is congressional micro-management with the clear intent of taking power out of the hands of the administration to make decisions on “who” and “how”. Reading through *some* of the bill (there is no way I could read all of it, even if I wanted to), the language is much more general (and non-specific) than the language Congress usually uses. The general language does not fit the definition of “pork.”

    Let me use the NASA language as an illustration. It gives $400 million to “exploration”. As Jeff reports, Congress gave absolutely no description on how the money is to be spent. This funding could be spent in many different ways. In other words, the Administration has a lot of flexibility. Flexibility is the opposite of pork.

    Now the $400M for exploration may turn out to be wasteful, ineffective, inefficient (or not), but it is not “pork”. It also may turn out to be a good long-term investment (depending on how it is spent, which is mostly dependent on who becomes the next Administrator).

    FWIW,

    – Al

  • I have not (yet) seen a clear example of pork that is in the final stimulus package.

    You don’t think that Harry Reid’s eight-billion-dollar maglev train from LA to Vegas counts?

  • Al Fansome

    Does it actually specify eight-billion for an LA-to-Vegas maglev train?

    As I said, I had not seen it “yet”. Assuming your information is accurate, now I have.

    – Al

  • Al Fansome

    Rand,

    According to the following websites, it sounds like the stimulus bill only funds high-speed rail in general. This suggests that the package does not specifically call out LA-to-Vegas. If true, then the LA-to-Vegas route can compete with all other routes, and then it does not meet the definition of “pork”.

    http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2185659/posts

    http://www.salon.com/tech/htww/2009/02/12/high_speed_rail_to_las_vegas/

    Considering that the Secretary of Transportation is a good-government Republican, unless there is very directive language, I do not think LA-to-Vegas is a done deal by any means. There are a lot of competitors for this funding. In fact, I could see the Secretary of Transportation going out of his way to make sure that LA-to-Vegas does not get favorable treatment.

    If you have a source that provides specific language from the stimulus package, making it clear that this is pork, please share.

    – Al

  • I only know what I’d heard. Since none of the people voting on it got to see the actual bill, how would I have… ;-)

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